Copying forbidden
SAP is planning the really big punishment expedition! The Walldorf experts suspect large-scale underlicensing in the SAP community.
The topic of indirect use in particular seems to be becoming very profitable for SAP. Licensing experts advise SAP's existing customers to set up appropriate "alarm systems" for the financial risk of underlicensing.
Experts at DSAG e. V. also believe that damages and back payments of more than two million euros are likely. But if displaying data is already understood as indirect use - what then?
In the PKL (SAP Price and Conditions List) the term "indirect use" is not found - this makes it very complicated. What is prohibited should also be precisely defined!
However, in the SAP GTC it says under point 2.2.2
"[...] for all persons who use (directly and/or indirectly) the SAP software that is the subject of the contract, have the necessary rights of use as defined in the PKL [...]"
Depreciation becomes usage: the SAP PKL states that usage means the execution of the process functions of the software, loading, executing, accessing, using the software or displaying data resulting from these functions.
If the son of SAP co-founder Dietmar Hopp and SAP Executive Board member Gerd Oswald now publish an SAP fan app for the ice hockey club Adler Mannheim, and parts of the data in this app possibly originate from the SAP system "IS Sports and Entertainment" (IS stands for Industry Solution, of which SAP has 25), then it is indirect use.
Daniel Hopp, managing director of SAP Arena and Adler Mannheim, has about 100,000 followers on social media, so if only a small portion of those fans download the app, there's a big licensing payment for SAP - at least in theory.
Indirect use is when data from any SAP system, in this case IS Sports and Entertainment, is displayed!