Business
Appian Will Seek to Reinstate Judgment Against Pegasystems, Inc. In Virginia Supreme Court
In its opinion, the Court of Appeals of Virginia fundamentally misread and misapplied precedent from the Supreme Court of Virginia and failed to give due
About this update from Appian Corporation
[{"type":"text","content":"In its opinion, the Court of Appeals of Virginia fundamentally misread and misapplied precedent from the Supreme Court of Virginia and failed to give due regard to the trial judge's evidentiary determinations and trial misconduct by Pegasystems\nMCLEAN, Va., July 30, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Appian (Nasdaq: APPN) announced today that it will appeal the decision by the Court of Appeals of Virginia and seek to reinstate its judgment of willful and malicious trade secret misappropriation against Pegasystems Inc. (\"Pega\"). The verdict from the jury was based on seven weeks of testimony from dozens of witnesses and thousands of pages of documents demonstrating that Pegasystems employed a \"spy\" to analyze the inner workings of Appian's software, improve its own product, and generate billions of dollars in revenue based on its misappropriation.\n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\n \nDespite Pega's claims that there were no \"trade secrets\" in the case, the Court of Appeals expressly held that Appian presented sufficient evidence to the jury of its trade secrets and that Appian had used reasonable measures to protect those trade secrets. The Virginia jury also found Pegasystems violated the Virginia Computer Crimes Act, but Pegasystems declined to appeal that ruling, meaning that the Virginia Computer Crimes Act violation by Pegasystems is confirmed and final. \nThe ruling from the three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals sending the case back to the trial court related to the exclusion of evidence, as well as the burdens of proof related to damages in a trade secret case once misappropriation is proven. The Court's ruling that Pegasystems, which has all the evidence related to its own sales, does not have to show that its sales were unrelated to its unlawful misappropriation isolates Virginia from the rest of the country's view on trade secret protection. Hypocritically, Pegasystems itself argued that this burden shifting was the correct approach to damages when engaged in its own trade secret litigation.\nAppian also believes the Court of Appeals' reversal of several evidentiary rulings by the trial court was the result of its failure to give appropriate regard to the full record and the trial court's discretion to conduct a trial over seven weeks involving significant misconduct by Pegasystems. Those rulings were well within the trial judge's a...