On the afternoon of November 23, 2010, Oracle Corporation general counsel Dorian Daley sat in the front row of a federal courtroom in Oakland, thumbs poised over her BlackBerry keyboard. On the screen was an e-mail addressed to Oracle CEO Lawrence Ellison and president Safra Catz. In the subject line, Daley had typed a dollar sign, a space, and a “B” for billion.
Daley had spent the better part of the previous two weeks in court monitoring a trial that would determine how much in damages Oracle was entitled to collect from rival SAP AG for the latter’s massive — and admitted — infringement of Oracle’s copyrighted materials. Now she was waiting for the jury to come in.
