In her Thursday ruling in Oakland, Calif., District Judge Phyllis Hamilton granted SAP's motion to throw out the verdict, setting the amount of damages due to Oracle at $272 million, and saying that SAP should get a new trial for damages if Oracle rejects that amount.

The $1.3 billion figure "grossly exceeded the actual harm to Oracle," Hamilton ruled, and "was contrary to the weight of the evidence."

Oracle also was involved this past week in , in which it accuses Hewlett-Packard of intellectual-property theft.

"There was voluminous evidence regarding the massive scope of the theft, clear involvement of SAP management in the misconduct and the tremendous value of the IP stolen," Deborah Hellinger, a spokeswoman for Oracle, based in Redwood City, Calif., said in an e-mail to Bloomberg News about the Oracle-SAP case. "We believe the jury got it right and we intend to pursue the full measure of damages that we believe are owed to Oracle."