Bengaluru: A
US court
document has revealed that HCL Technologies’ claim alleging the French IT firm Atos of direct
copyright infringement
persists, documents accessed by TOI showed. The US court has confirmed the magistrate judge’s findings as correct and has partially granted and partially denied Atos’s motion to dismiss.
HCL Technologies
is seeking damages to the tune of $132 million from Atos for copyright infringement.
In 2018, HCL Technologies spent $1.8 billion to acquire select software assets from IBM, marking one of the largest acquisitions by an Indian IT services company. HCL had an IP (intellectual property) partnership with
IBM
on some of these products, where HCL would develop the products and IBM would sell and service them. Following the terms of an asset purchase agreement between IBM and HCL in 2018, HCL Technologies became the sole owner of DX Software and Domino Software.
IBM assigned to HCLTech the right to sue for past, present, and future infringement, misappropriation, or any other violations of HCLTech’s exclusive ownership rights in and to the DX Software and the Domino Software, as shown in the court document. HCL America, a subsidiary of HCLTech, is an authorised reseller of the two software products.
Prior to IBM’s sale of DX and Domino to HCLTech, IBM licensed DX and Domino to one or more Atos entities under what is known as an enterprise license agreement (ELA). Under such enterprise agreements, IBM customers can make “catalog purchases” which allow an amount to be prepaid, and the client can decide later which IBM programmes will be licensed under it. Following IBM’s divestment of DX, Domino, and other software products to HCLTech under the APA, HCL began communicating with Atos and other commercial users to better understand their requirements for DX, Domino, and associated software upgrades, as shown in the court records. HCL has alleged that Atos used DX and Domino for its own benefit, allowing the latter to receive revenue and substantial benefit without compensating HCL America.
When TOI reached out to HCLTech, the company declined to comment since the matter is sub judice, while Atos said it won’t offer comments on ongoing legal cases.
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