A jury last year ordered SAP to pay Oracle US$1.3 billion in damages after SAP's TomorrowNow subsidiary was caught downloading software and support materials illegally from an Oracle website.

Lawyers for the two sides were back in court Wednesday to argue SAP's motions for a retrial and a reduction in the damages against it. SAP says the damages were out of proportion to the evidence and "a miscarriage of justice."

"It's going to take me some time to determine what I'm going to do," Judge Phyllis Hamilton told the lawyers after two hours of arguments at the U.S. District Court in Oakland, California. In the meantime, she asked if the two sides could settle their differences with a court-appointed mediator.

"My own sense is that it's not likely to be productive in the absence of a ruling one way or the other," said Gregory Lanier, an attorney acting for SAP.

Geoffrey Howard, representing Oracle, said there had been no discussions between the companies since the verdict last November. "I don't think either of us would be particularly optimistic about it," he said.