In a trade secret lawsuit between Tata Consultancy Services and Epic Systems Corporation, the US District Court for Western District Wisconsin passed an order reducing the punitive damages award to $140 million while also directing the clerk of the court to file an amended judgement with necessary changes.
Epic Systems had accused TCS of “brazenly stealing the trade secrets, confidential information, documents and data” that belonged to them. The lawsuit had been filed in 2014 by Epic Systems, where it alleges that TCS had stolen 6,447 files while it had been hired to implement healthcare software. The jury found TCS guilty in 2016 and awarded $940 million in damages. The damages were then brought down to $420 million ($280 million in punitive damages and $140 million in compensatory damages). The punitive damages were appealed against as they were considered to be too excessive and have now been reduced to $140 million.
Epic said that it had learned from an informant that TCS employees had been “fraudulently accessing” Epic software beyond limitations that the consulting contract had required. They then alleged that TCS was using these documents and software to improve their own competing product.
The regulatory filing released by TCS also mentioned that it has strong arguments in its favor and that the order by the appeal court was not supported by the facts presented by TCS before the court. TCS states that the company “did not misuse or derive any benefit from EPIC’s documents and plans”.
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