[spinchange]

This piece doesn't explain or detail the circumstances of the suit whatsoever. SAP has already admitted fault. They acquired a company called TomorrowNow that was scraping it's clients' Oracle servers to service parts of their systems that it wasn't licensed or authorized to work on. What is being fought over now is damages.

What's new to the story is the public accusation that Apotheker was directly responsible. (He was involved with the acquisition as an executive and had become CEO by the time the suit was filed)

So, if the HP board didn't see this coming, they simply didn't vet Apotheker well enough or are still underestimating Ellison. Probably both.