Forty-nine of the 99 customers have subsequently supplied some 77,012 documents, which SAP is reviewing in order to "appropriately designate any confidential or highly confidential information that may be contained therein," according to the filing by SAP in U.S. District Court-Northern California District.
It was not clear Thursday what type of information the documents contain. None of the customers in question were named in the filing.
An Oracle spokeswoman declined comment Thursday. An SAP spokeswoman did not immediately return a call for comment.
Oracle filed a lawsuit against SAP in March 2007, charging that workers at TomorrowNow, a provider of third-party support for Oracle's PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel applications, illegally downloaded material from Oracle's support systems and used it to court Oracle customers.
SAP has that TomorrowNow workers were authorized to download materials from Oracle's site on behalf of TomorrowNow customers, but acknowledged some "inappropriate downloads" had occurred. SAP has also said that Oracle's software remained in TomorrowNow's systems and has denied Oracle's allegations of a wider pattern of wrongdoing.
SAP referred to the TomorrowNow customer subpoenas in one of a series of recent filings related to discovery in the sprawling suit.
"It's a key point to any resolution whether Oracle's bottom line was damaged by former customers turning to TomorrowNow for their [application] support needs," 451 Group analyst China Martens said via e-mail Thursday. "Oracle seems to be struggling to prove that point, hence the resorting to customers. We question the wisdom of that move, which seems overly intrusive to end-users."
But one attorney who has been following the case said Oracle's move is not unheard of, and was "very appropriate" given the circumstances.
"So much of [SAP's] defense is that [TomorrowNow was] acting on behalf of their customers, so naturally Oracle wants to know more about the customer interactions," said Eric Goldman, an associate professor of law at California's Santa Clara University School of Law, via e-mail.
That said, sending a defendant's customers subpoenas is "usually a hard-ball tactic, because it annoys customers a lot (it means they have to spend time and money to deal with someone else's lawsuit) and can spook customers from dealing with the vendor," he added.
Customers may also worry they will be named as defendants next, Goldman said.
The case's next settlement conference is scheduled for Feb. 23, and a trial date has been set for February 2010.