Jury trial testimony on E-commerce software trade secret and copyright damages

CRA was retained by a global equipment manufacturer accused of copyright infringement, trade secret misappropriation, and breach of a software license agreement related to a cloud-based procurement system. The plaintiff’s claim was based on internal cost savings projections and external transaction proceeds from the alleged unauthorized sale of the software to a 3rd party. The CRA team’s analysis focused on apportionment of value to the specific source code at issue and applied the cost, market, and income approaches to valuing IP rights. While the jury found willful misappropriation, it awarded compensatory damages that were consistent with our CRA consultant’s damages opinion and represented a small fraction of the plaintiff’s claim.