A jury in Dallas, Texas Federal court has ruled that Indian tech giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) must pay $210 million to US IT Services firm DXC Technologies (formerly CSC) for alleged misappropriation of source code used in the development of TCS Bancs, its software platform.
The jury concluded that TCS had infringed upon CSC’s proprietary platforms, accessing a trade secret and violating intellectual property rights. Despite the jury’s advisory verdict, TCS expressed its respectful disagreement and stated that the matter will now proceed for decision by the court. The court has requested additional briefings from both parties.
The jury upheld that TCS engaged in willful and malicious misappropriation of both source code and confidential documentation through improper means.
The lawsuit was initiated in 2019, alleging that TCS unlawfully obtained DXC’s trade secrets to create competitive life-insurance software. TCS was accused of using confidential information from DXC’s Vantage-One and CyberLife software, designed for managing life insurance and annuity policies, to develop its own platform.
According to the claims, TCS employees assigned to develop the Bancs platform encountered challenges in devising a solution for calculating a rate of return (ROR) in a specific insurance context. Allegations further suggested that TCS employees resorted to copying DXC’s source code when faced with obstacles in building their software.
The lawsuit highlighted exchanged emails between TCS employees, indicating their exploration of a solution within the Vantage software. Subsequently, a TCS employee allegedly copied and pasted the actual Vantage source code relating to the ROR calculation, along with resulting Vantage calculations, into an email sent to colleagues at TCS.
