Software maker Oracle has extended its lawsuit against SAP, accusing its rival of an organised and persistent programme of intellectual property theft.

Oracle's original lawsuit was filed after it discovered that employees at TomorrowNow had downloaded huge volumes of its support documents.

Oracle has now filed an amendment to those complaints, after being given access to some of SAP’s internal records.

It alleges that SAP's management board were warned before it acquired TomorrowNow that the company "did not operate legally".

Following SAP's subsequent acquisition of TomorrowNow, it adopted a programme, code-named "Project Blue", to cover up the illegality of the activities, Oracle said in its latest filings.

Oracle said the records show TomorrowNow had implemented a systematic programme to steal vital technical information. This included establishing a centre dedicated to downloading Oracle's technical information, along with a customised software tool called “Titan” that was programmed to by-pass customer log-in restrictions.

One of the servers in the download centre held nearly 8 million Oracle support documents, Oracle claimed.

"SAP accessed these master download libraries as needed when customers needed a fix - regardless of which log-in credential SAP had used to download a particular fix in the library, regardless of whether the customer getting the fix had any license to receive it, and regardless of whether the customer had a support contract with Oracle entitling them to receive a fix," Oracle said in a statement.

SAP's board members knew of, and were complicit in, the establishment of this download centre, Oracle claimed.

SAP said it will respond to the amended complaint in court on 11 September.

Last week, SAP confirmed it was shutting its TomorrowNow subsidiary, in an attempt to draw a line under the episode.