TCS to appeal against US court's $940mn penalty verdict

MUMBAI, INDIA: A Wisconsin federal jury has slapped a $940 million penalty, including $700 million in punitive damages, on the Indian IT major, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) for allegedly stealing “trade secrets, confidential information, documents and data” from it from an American company, Epic Systems.

The electronic medical records vendor had filed a lawsuit against TCS and its US subsidiary, Tata America International, in US district court in Madison in late 2014.

The company said Tata reviewed Epic’s intellectual property under the pretence of doing consulting work for an Epic client, Oregon based Kaiser Permanente during 2012-2014

According to the complaint filed by Epic, Tata employees fraudulently accessed Epic's software and downloaded at least 6,477 documents, containing information that could be used to benefit Tata’s own health care software, Med Mantra.

TCS, however, in a statement said it did not misuse or derive any benefit from downloaded documents from Epic System’s user-web portal. TCS also did not benefit from any of the said information for development of its own hospital management system “Med Mantra’ which was implemented for a large hospital chain in India in 2009.

It says “while TCS respects the legal process, the jury’s verdict on liability and damages was unexpected as the company believes they are unsupported by the evidence presented during the trial.”

TCS plans to defend its position vigorously in appeals to higher courts and it would appeal against it.