Tata Consultancy Service Ltd, which denied the infringement charges filed against them by its rival, Epic Systems, will appeal against the US Federal Court's verdict. The court asked Tata to pay almost $1 billion for violating a U.S intellectual-property law against the other company.
Tata Consultancy and Tata American International Corp. were asked by the federal jury in Madison, Wisconsin to pay $940 million for using the data of Epic Systems without asking their permission. The Tata Company, however, can still file for an appeal 30 days after the judgment has been handed down as per Bloomberg.
According to the India Today, the details of the lawsuit said that instead of competing legally with Epic, TCS has engaged in the practice of stealing documents, confidential information, trade secrets and other information and data from the said software company. TCS' aim is to get the technical expertise of Epic that it has developed over years of hard work and investment.
As reported by the Economic Times, Epic claimed that TCS employees were brought on as consultants to a Kaiser Permanente Sunnyside Medical Center in Portland to set up an Epic system in the said center. TCS has allegedly took 6,000 documents containing the software company's development information by using fake user accounts.
The jury on the case awarded $240 million in compensatory damages for TCS' use of comparative analysis and confidential information. U.S District Judge William M. Conley, however, said that Tata Consultancy may challenge the amount stated any time they wish to.
Tata Consultancy, on the other hand, has been firm on their stand of vigorously appealing to the higher court. The company reiterated that it didn't misuse nor benefited from any downloaded documents from Epic for its own sake. Tata Consultancy also believed that the amount stated by the jury is still uncertain and can still be reduced.
On the brighter side, the stocks of Tata Consultancy has recently rose to .3 percent, the highest it got so far since November 4.
