A federal judge on Monday told Oracle and SAP to submit financial proposals to settle the lawsuit over SAP's subsidiary, TomorrowNow.

Oracle sued SAP last year, claiming that employees at TomorrowNow, a provider of third-party support services for Oracle's Siebel, PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards product lines, illegally downloaded material from Oracle's support systems and used them to woo Oracle customers.

SAP has said TomorrowNow workers made "inappropriate downloads" from Oracle's Web site but has rejected Oracle's claims of a wider pattern of malfeasance. SAP has since moved to shut down TomorrowNow after failing to find a buyer.

Oracle has claimed that its damages in the case are, "at a minimum, well into the several hundreds of millions of dollars and likely are at least a billion dollars."

Judge Joseph Spero on Monday ordered Oracle to submit a "specific dollar demand" by Feb. 13 and for SAP to file a counter-proposal by Feb. 18, according to an order filed Monday in a California U.S. District Court. A settlement conference is scheduled for Feb. 23.

"We will abide by the decision of the court," SAP spokesman Saswato Das said in a statement Tuesday. "It is in everyone's best interest to bring this case to an appropriate resolution without undue delay."

Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger declined comment.

SAP and Oracle recently had a settlement conference but did not reach an agreement. A trial date is set for February 2010.

Meanwhile, SAP has charged that Oracle is trying to bog down proceedings in the case, and recently asked the court to throw out some of Oracle's claims.