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Appian: Judge Rejects Pegasystems Motion to Overturn $2 Billion Jury Verdict
Pegasystems to pay Appian additional $23.6 million in legal fees for willful and malicious misappropriation of trade secrets MCLEAN, Va., Sept. 16, 2022
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[{"type":"text","content":"Pegasystems to pay Appian additional $23.6 million in legal fees for willful and malicious misappropriation of trade secrets\nMCLEAN, Va., Sept. 16, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Appian (NASDAQ: APPN) announced today that the Circuit Court for Fairfax County, Virginia entered a final judgment awarding it $2.036 billion in damages from Pegasystems Inc. (NASDAQ: PEGA) for trade secret misappropriation. The Court also entered final judgment on the jury's verdict that Pegasystems violated the Virginia Computer Crimes Act. Appian had brought the case to trial in March 2022 to ensure the protection of its proprietary intellectual property, including its trade secrets, and received the jury's verdict after a 7 week trial on May 9, 2022. As a result of the jury's finding of willful and malicious appropriation of Appian's trade secrets, the Court also ordered Pegasystems to pay Appian $23.6 million in attorney's fees associated with the case. Finally, the Court ordered Pegasystems to pay Appian statutory post-judgment interest on the judgment at an annual rate of 6%, or approximately $122 million per year.\n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\n \nFinal judgement awards Appian $2.036 billion in damages from Pegasystems Inc. for trade secret misappropriation.\"We are pleased that the Court rejected Pegasystems' efforts to throw out the jury's verdict,\" stated Christopher Winters, General Counsel at Appian. \"We think that the jury's verdict was sound, and the Court's rulings at trial were well founded. Appian only asked for damages representing Pegasystems' unjust enrichment at Appian's expense, which was supported by expert witness testimony including from a retired Gartner analyst. We did not seek or receive punitive damages. We will now move to the appellate phase of the litigation, where we are confident that we will prevail as well.\"\nDuring the seven-week trial, Appian presented evidence that Pegasystems hired an employee of a government contractor (the \"Contractor\"), to provide Pegasystems with access to Appian's software as a part of an effort to learn how to better compete against Appian. In hiring the Contractor, Pegasystems instructed its third-party contracting service to recruit someone who was not \"loyal\" to Appian. Appian put forward evidence that the Contractor passed trade secret information to Pegasystems to enable its employees to build c...