$2 billion Corporate Espionage Verdict Overturned by Appeals Court

Software company Pegasystems convinced a Virginia appeals court on Tuesday to throw out a $2 billion jury verdict for rival Appian in a court battle over Pegasystems’ alleged theft of Appian’s trade secrets.

The award from 2022 had been the largest damages verdict in Virginia court history, the Court of Appeals of Virginia said in the decision...

McLean, Virginia-based Appian had said in a 2020 lawsuit that Pegasystems hired a contractor to steal confidential information from Appian’s software platform in order to improve its own products and better train its sales force...

Appian said that Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Pegasystems referred internally to the contractor as a spy and to its scheme as “Project Crush,” with Pegasystems employees using fake credentials to access Appian’s software. Pegasystems characterized “Project Crush” as competitive research in a 2022 statement...

Pegasystems’ CEO said in a statement following the verdict that Appian’s CEO “could not identify one trade secret that Pega had allegedly misappropriated” during the trial. more

Moral: Make sure your "trade secrets" meet the requirements of, and can be clearly identified as, Trade Secrets. more