Relief for TCS as US court rejects CSC's restraining order demand

A US court has denied Computer Sciences Corp (CSC)’s application for temporary restraining order against Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) after CSC failed to prove its claims.

CSC, a US-based insurance platform provider to a TCS client, had last month filed for temporary restraining order in US against TCS after accusing them of misappropriating its trade secrets, of the Cyberlife and Vantage software platforms. TCS had in turn stated that CSC was trying to disrupt their $2 billion dollar business deal with the common client Transamerica.

A trade secret is misappropriated when it is acquired through “improper means,” noted the court ruling. “CSC acknowledges that TCS has access to the Vantage software because MSI, pursuant to its license agreement with CSC, has given TCS access as an MSI/TransAmerica service provider. CSC fails to set forth sufficient evidence that TCS breached its duty pursuant to its obligations under the license agreement between CSC and MSI/Transamerica,” noted the ruling which Business Standard had access to.

The court has ordered both parties to submit a proposed discovery and briefing schedule for a preliminary injunction hearing.

CSC had licensed its software to customer Money Services Inc (MSI) in 1994 and in 2014, MSI onboarded TCS to manage IT services. MSI is now owned by Transamerica, with whom TCS announced a $2 billion third party administration deal in 2018 for their life & annuity business. TCS would help TransAmerica to service over 10 million policies. TCS also provides end-to-end support and maintenance to their legacy applications.

TCS also rebadged 2200 Transamerica employees post the deal. CSC claims that the current TCS employees who had access to the CSC code were involved in the breach as they attempted to replicate similar insurance functionalities on TCS BaNCS platform.

“TCS is pleased that the court ruled in its favour and denied CSC’s motion for a temporary restraining order. TCS goes to great lengths to safeguard any trade secrets with which it is entrusted, from whatever the source. As part of those efforts, we have a strict code of conduct in place and stringent policies designed to meet all of our legal and ethical obligations,” said TCS spokespersons in response to the ruling. As the case is still pending in courts, TCS did not comment further on the matter, except to reiterate that CSC’s allegations have no merit.

TCS BaNCS is a global product with implementations serving more than 25 million policies across global clients. Earlier, in response to the CSC lawsuit, TCS had noted that physically, the TCS BaNCS Software Development Team is located in a separate designated delivery center in Kolkata, India and does not have the capability to access Transamerica’s internal electronic systems, including CSC’s information, which might be stored on it. TCS has tight controls, including strong firewalls, to ensure that the TCS personnel providing support to legacy platforms and TCS BaNCS teams have no association.

CSC had originally cited access to an email chain between TCS and TCS TransAmerica employees, where the latter shared proprietary CSC information. However, the ruling noted that CSC could not prove that their code was actually shared with BaNCS team or used for the development of BaNCS software.