Most people may know that patent litigation can lead to huge damage amounts. Not as commonly known is that trade secret litigation can also lead to significant damages, and steps should be taken to ensure that companies, and their employees, are not exposing themselves to liability.
For example, in May 2022, a Virginia state court jury awarded Appian Corp. $2 billion in damages against fellow software company Pegasystems Inc. for allegedly using corporate spies to steal Appian’s trade secrets. Similarly, in 2018, Waymo, a Google company working on self-driving cars, alleged that a former engineer had left with trade secret information to work for Otto, a similar self-driving-vehicle startup later acquired by Uber. Those companies ultimately settled with Uber, paying Google in equity shares worth about $245 million (at the time). Likewise, in February 2020, an Illinois federal jury awarded Motorola Solutions Inc. about $764 million against Hytera Communications Corp. for theft of confidential files relating to two-way digital radio. Finally, in October 2020, another software company TriZetto Group, won $855 million when a New York federal jury agreed that competitor Syntel Inc. misappropriated its trade secrets and infringed its copyrights for insurance claim software. While many of the above cases are currently under appeal or have had the jury awards reduced, they still demonstrate that juries generally do not like trade secret theft and significant damage awards can occur.
Parsons Behle & Latimer has intellectual property attorneys who can guide you in shaping your business practices and employee policies to avoid running afoul of trade secret issues.
