With less than a week to go until a court showdown between Oracle and SAP in Oakland, California, Larry Ellison has turned up the rhetorical heat.

As we said a couple of days ago, it will be hard to stop the Oracle CEO having his say, whatever efforts SAP makes to prevent this case turning into a media circus.

Even by Mr Ellison’s standards, though, the statement from  Oracle late on Tuesday carried a particularly venomous sting. Aimed at Leo Apotheker – the former SAP executive now at the helm of Hewlett-Packard – the message was blunt: turn up and appear as a witness at the trial, or risk being painted as a coward. Read more