SAP issued a press release yesterday refuting the claim

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.

SAP strongly rejects the misleading speculation in The Wall Street Journal opinion piece. SAP has always said that it stands for openness and choice in the market. In light of the proposed Oracle-Sun merger, we, like many others, have concerns about customer choice in the database market and the future open licensing of Java. We communicated our concerns to both Oracle and Sun at the working level as far back as the end of July 2009.

Since there was no response, our CEO Leo Apotheker took the initiative and wrote to both Oracle and Sun CEOs in the middle of September to voice our concerns again, offer a dialogue and attempt to clarify the issues. We have not heard back from Oracle, but instead found Leo Apotheker's letter leaked to the press last week. This is both telling and disappointing as it demonstrates 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 has raised the same concerns with the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission as well as a number of other antitrust authorities throughout the world, and will continue to cooperate with these agencies in an open and transparent manner in the interests of its customers and partners. We at SAP have the highest respect for the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, the European Commission as well as for any other antitrust and regulatory agency in the countries in which we do business.