Hunton Retail Law Resource

Emboldened by its recent victory in SAP v. Diageo (2017) EWHC (TCC) 189, SAP may become even more opportunistic when it comes to auditing its customers’ use of various SAP products. On February 16, 2017, the England and Wales High Court of Justice, Queen’s Bench Division (Technology and Construction Court) ruled that the use by Diageo’s sales representatives and customers of various software systems that pulled data from and pushed data to Diageo’s instance of mySAP ERP, even though there was no direct access to or use of mySAP ERP by such sales representatives or customers, constituted impermissible access to and use of mySAP ERP under Diageo’s license agreement with SAP.

Now is the time for SAP customers to review their existing contracts with SAP (and related technical solutions) to determine whether they are at risk for claims by SAP of impermissible indirect access and use of SAP products. The Global Technology and Outsourcing team at Hunton & Williams LLP has significant experience with SAP, including negotiating SAP agreements on the front end to avoid these risks and reviewing existing agreements to determine whether the risk is present.

Read the full alert.