Kristin Biedinger

A jury recently awarded Epic Systems Corporation (“Epic”), a medical software company, $940 million in damages in a case against Tata Consultancy Services Limited (“Tata”) involving theft of Epic’s trade secrets and confidential information. 

Tata, a consulting company and owner of Med Mantra, a hospital management system that competes with Epic, was hired as a consultant by Kaiser Permanete to aid in the implementation of Epic’s software.    

Epic entered into a software licensing agreement with Kaiser Permanente to provide various services including access to Epic’s UserWeb which is a workspace for providing training and other confidential information for Epic’s customers.  Epic provides access to the UserWeb to consultants of Epic’s customers provided such consultants execute the applicable access agreement with Epic, which limits a consultant’s use of information accessed via the UserWeb to the extend necessary in providing implementation services on behalf of Epic’s customers. 

The jury found that Tata misappropriated Epic’s trade secrets, used Epic’s confidential information for purposes other than implementing Epic’s software, and that Tata permitted employees with access to Epic’s confidential information to consult with those Tata employees who worked on the development of the competing Med Mantra software.  The $940 million award of damages is believed to be one of the largest in history for trade secret misappropriation cases. 

This case highlights the importance of complying with the terms of any software license and ensuring that any consultants are using the software within the scope of the license terms.

The case is Epic Systems Corporation vs. Tata Consultancy Services Limited and Tata America International Corporation, Western District of Wisconsin, case number 14-cv-748-wmc.  Tata has stated that it plans to appeal.