Software maker SAP AG admitted a subsidiary had carried out "inappropriate downloads" of documents belonging to Oracle but claimed that SAP itself had no access to that material.

Responding to Oracle's charges of intellectual property theft, SAP chief executive Henning Kagermann said its TomorrowNow unit should not have made some of the downloads but that firewalls had protected the material from SAP's view.

"Even a single inappropriate download is unacceptable from my perspective. We regret very much that this occurred," Kagermann said.

SAP said both it and TomorrowNow had been asked to supply certain documents to the U.S. Justice Department and that both intended to cooperate fully with the request.

SAP said it had installed a new executive chairman to help ensure proper practices at TomorrowNow, which SAP bought in 2005 to help it win over Oracle customers.

Kagermann said SAP was open to all options including a settlement but expected no big developments before the next hearing scheduled for September at the U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

Oracle sued SAP in March, alleging corporate theft on a grand scale through the use of customers' online access codes to steal copyrighted software.

Reuters