The long-drawn-out legal scuffle between SAP and Oracle took a fresh turn on Friday, with SAP filing a motion with the Northern District Court of California in Oakland, seeking a gag order for preventing people involved in the case from talking to the media.

According to SAP, the gag order that the company is seeking aims largely at preventing Oracle’s lawyers from making public statements about the Oracle’s lawsuit against SAP and its TomorrowNow subsidiary.

In its lawsuit, Oracle accused SAP and TomorrowNow of stealing a number of big fixes, patches and other support materials from an Oracle website; as well as using these materials to provide cut-price maintenance service for Oracle customers.

SAP is of the view that Oracle lawyers’ interaction with media will influence potential jurors. The company’s request for the gag order cited a recent column in The New York Times that said SAP had committed “the most serious business crime you can commit.” In addition, the column said a former SAP senior executive, Léo Apotheker, “clearly knew” that Oracle software was being stolen.

With SAP officially acknowledging last month that the illegal downloads of Oracle software did take place, the trial – scheduled to begin on November 1 - will likely focus on the extent of damages that SAP should pay Oracle. While Oracle is seeking billions of dollars in damages, SAP says the amount should be in the tens of millions.