Cognizant Sues Infosys For Misappropriating Trade Secrets; Indian IT Giant Countersues

Cognizant and Infosys are now fighting a US lawsuit wherein the former IT giant has accused the latter of allegedly being "caught red-handed" stealing trade secrets of its healthcare software TriZetto. [Source: Mint]

“Infosys was caught red-handed misappropriating TriZetto trade secrets that Infosys originally had access to through non-disclosure and access agreements (NDAAs)," the 22-page court response reported.

Cognizant also claimed that Infosys refused to allow an audit of its use of TriZetto information, which would prove its case, and asked TriZetto to “simply trust, based on nothing, that there had been no wrongdoing.”

Also read: Zomato Introduces AI-powered ‘Nugget’ To Help Scale Up Businesses (startuppedia.in)

What actually happened? 

This comes over a month after Infosys had counter-sued the NASDAQ-listed Cognizant, alleging that the American IT company and its CEO, Ravi Kumar, applied anti-competitive tactics and misused sensitive information to slow down the growth of its healthcare platform, Infosys Helix.

This legal dispute goes back to August 2024 when the IT leader Cognizant appeared in a Dallas court. Infosys rejected the allegation in a January 9 filing this year, saying Cognizant's healthcare solutions were public and asked the court to make Cognizant properly identify the trade secrets in question.

Infosys had countersued Cognizant, claiming Ravi Kumar had delayed the rollout of Infosys’s healthcare software product back when he was a president at Infosys and had been negotiating for a job with Cognizant.

Ravi Kumar left Infosys in October 2022 to join as a CEO at Cognizant in January 2023.

Incidentally, Indian IT giant Wipro had also accused Cognizant of poaching its key executives, Mohd Haque and Jatin Dalal and filed suits in the US and India. 

Also read: FM Nirmala Sitharaman Says India Will Continue To Cut Import Duties (startuppedia.in)