TCS Faces Lawsuit for Stealing Trade Secret Theft, Again; Right After Losing to Epic Systems for $420 Million

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There is something fishy going on with the Indian IT giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).

The US based insurance platform provider, Computer Sciences Corp (CSC) filed a lawsuit against TCS, accusing that the tech giant has been stealing its trade secrets. This incident takes place right after TCS had lost in a similar lawsuit in 2014, to a US based software firm Epic Systems, on account of trade theft and stealing more than 6,000 documents with confidential data, leading to TCS paying a handsome sum of $420 million penalty to Epic Systems.

What exactly is happening here?

All About CSC’s Allegations:

CSC claimed that TCS is using their trade secrets to build up a competing platform, as TCS is stepping into the life insurance market. DXC Technology, the parent body of CSC, had licensed its software systems Vantage and Cyberlife to Money Services Inc (MSI), which is owned by the US insurer TransAmerica, following a $2 billion third party deal that TCS won from TransAmerica in 2018.

CSC says that the two softwares Vantage and Cyberlife took decades of hardwork and millions of investment to come into laudable success, while with TCS’s recent announcement to enter the insurance market, demanding the necessity of a similar platform, which TCS was finding difficulty building in, led to the latter accessing CSC’s proprietary codes. The alleged software TCS is on the brink of developing is the TCS BaNCS platform.

The Lawsuit Against TCS

The lawsuit is filed against TCS America. TCS is “improperly accessing” its codes, the US-based CSC said in its lawsuit filed last week in Texas, seeking punitive damages. TCS took onboard 2,200 TransAmerica employees as a part of the deal, for creating the BaNCS platform. It has hired employees who not only have the knowledge of using Vantage and Cyberlife but also MSI employees having access to CSC source codes, as stated by CSC.

CSC discovered and has proofs that TCS had been snipping parts of CSC’s source codes and emailing it to their colleagues and in a time of just three weeks accessed and analyzed both the proprietary CSC software documentation and the Vantage source code to try to determine the method and process by which Vantage calculates this particular rate of return. The theft was apparently discovered when a CSC employee with a TransAmerica email ID received an email with the codes, possibly by accident.

CSC is looking for a permanent restriction order for TCS’ malpractice in developing the BaNCS software. However, TCS stands affirmative to its grounds, especially after re-electing a strong and wiser set of lawyers. TCS, as of now, doesn’t choose to speak anything on the matter.

TCS, being the biggest IT giant in India and such a heavy recruiter every year for fresh Indian techies, when indulged in such news prospects, brings a sense of doubts and second thoughts among young Indian engineers. Anyhow, everyone awaits how this case turns unfolds itself finally. Stay tuned.