(RTTNews) -  Wednesday, SAP AG (SAP: News ) issued a statement rejecting the speculation in The Wall Street Journal opinion piece that it may have intended to offer facilitating the Oracle-Sun deal in the ongoing European Commission review, terming it as misleading.

The company said The Wall Street Journal speculated last week that SAP CEO Leo Apotheker may have intended to offer facilitating the Oracle-Sun merger in the ongoing European Commission's review of the Oracle-Sun deal when he wrote a letter to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison in September. The letter was leaked to The Wall Street Journal.

On November 5, in an review titled "SAP's 'Invitation' to Oracle", the journal said that "some observers have questioned whether the Commission is holding up the merger at the urging of Germany's SAP, which is a partner but also a competitor of Oracle—even though SAP does not compete with Sun."

The journal also quoted SAP CEO Leo Apotheker's letter to Oracle's Larry Ellison that read "As you know, we have significant concerns about Oracle's proposed takeover of Sun. We renew our invitation to meet to attempt to resolve our concerns and other open issues between our companies. Please let us know if and when you would like to meet."

The Walldorf, Germany-based SAP said that it is concerned about the customer choice in the database market and the future open licensing of Java in the proposed Oracle-Sun merger. In addition, the company noted that it communicated its concerns to both Oracle and Sun at the working level at the end of July 2009.

Further, the company said since it did not receive any response, its CEO, Leo Apotheker took the initiative and wrote to CEOs of both Oracle and Sun in mid-September to express its concerns again, and offered a dialogue and attempt to clarify issues.
The company also said that it again received no responses from Oracle, but instead found Leo Apotheker's letter leaked to the press last week.

The company expressed its disappointment over the leakage of Leo Apotheker's letter, and said that there is no real interest by Oracle to listen and explain how it wants to ensure the required level of customer choice in the database market as well as open access to Java.

Java is an important programming language that has brought about significant innovation within the entire IT industry - from large-scale enterprise applications to mobile devices and payment cards.

SAP also noted that it has raised the same concerns with the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission, as well as with a number of other antitrust authorities globally. SAP said it would continue to cooperate with the agencies in an open and transparent manner in the interests of its customers and partners.

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