“The messaging [from the Appian case] is clear – courts and juries are now more than ever willing to hand out big penalties for trade secrets violations, particularly where there is evidence of intentional misconduct.”
Corporate espionage is as old as the day is long. The modern digital world has made it easier than ever to gain access to sensitive “secret sauce”, such as software, customer and vendor lists, business methods, techniques, formulas and recipes. With a significant shift to a remote working environment and the relative ease of employee portability, protecting and defending confidential information and trade secrets must be at the top of the priority list for any organization.
In May 2022, in Appian v. Pegasystems, a jury awarded likely the largest sum in the history of Virginia state court proceedings, finding that Pegasystems was liable for $2 billion-plus in damages to Appian for planting a corporate spy at Appian for over 10 years. Through its plant (an operation Pegasystems internally referred to as “Project Crush”), Pegasystems was found to have misappropriated critical sensitive information about Appian’s cloud software, some of which was being developed under a government contract. The jury also found that Pegasystems’ employees, including its CEO, improperly used aliases to access trial versions of Appian’s software.
While the facts of the Appian case are not particularly unusual, the measure of damages is quite stunning. The $940 million dollar award...
PinkNews' founder Benjamin Cohen | YouTube screenshot The BBC has reached a “substantial” settlement with the online UK LGBTQ+ outlet PinkNews over allegations the BBC now agrees were “false and ...