Software testing provider Cognizant has confirmed it is suing Indian tech giant Infosys in a Texas court over the use of its insurance software, the company has disclosed.
New Jersey-based Cognizant alleges that Infosys has stolen some of its trade secrets that relate to its insurance software tools, including testing solutions.
The company claims that the Indian software firm “unlawfully extracted data from its databases and used it to build and market competing software.”
Cognizant’s software products are used by a range of large insurance companies, mostly across the US, to speed up and automate administrative tasks, including regular testing and monitoring.
Infosys allegedly misused Cognizant’s TriZetto’s software solution in order “to create test cases”, thereby repacking TriZetto’s data sets into an Infosys platform, according to court filings.
Moreover, the firm claimed Infosys broke US laws by designing and creating software in order to extract confidential TriZetto trade secrets.
Cognizant has asked a Texas court for an unspecified amount of monetary damages and requested it will order Infosys to half the use of its software and trade secrets with immediate effect.
In response to the legal complaint, Infosys released a statement, strongly denying the allegations, saying the company plans to defend itself in court.
When contacted by QA Financial, an Infosys spokeswoman declined to discuss Cognizant TriZetto Software v. Infosys Ltd at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, No. 3:24-cv-02158.
Cognizant is represented by Kieran Kieckhefer, Betty Yang, Ahmed ElDessouki and Elizabeth McCloskey of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, while it is not known which firm will act for Infosys.
The spokeswoman declined to provide details on which firm or legal team will represent the company.
Four years ago, Cognizant won $854 million from Atos in a legal fight over the use of its trade secrets. The amount was later significantly reduced and eventually dropped altogether, following a lengthy appeal.
BrowserStack vs Deque
The legal case shows resemblance with another lawsuit that is currently pending.
US software testing provider BrowserStack was recently sued by one its main rivals, software test equipment provider Deque Systems, over the use of one of its testing platforms.
Deque Systems alleged that BrowserStack acquired Deque’s proprietary testing platform DevTools, only for it to be taken apart and directly access its codes.
The codes, as Deque Systems claims, were then duplicated in order to develop BrowserStack’s own testing tool, which was subsequently launched and brought to market by BrowserStack at the end of last year.
“When we looked at the extent of the copying, the theft was intentional, pervasive, blatant and frankly, really shameless,” clarified Preety Kumar, the CEO and founder of Deque Systems, in a statement in March.
“So they even use their work emails, with ‘browserstack.com’ when they signed up for our trials [so] we have decided that we’re going to have to vigorously defend our intellectual property rights,” Kumar said.
Deque Systems develops accessibility software and testing tools and is used by a range of large North American banks, including PNC Financial Services and U.S. Bancorp.
Kumar (pictured left) said Deque Systems spent more than five years developing the testing platform.
She stressed designing efforts evolved around ensuring that the product remains usable for novice users and still be compatible with algorithms at the backend.
“Some of the questions that are in BrowserStack’s product are verbatim stolen questions from our product, as well as in addition to some of the code that they saw,” Kumar claimed.
At the time BrowserStack allegedly signed up “for hundreds of accounts”, as she put it, Deque Systems’ product was in beta first.
When Deque subsequently launched the software product, it drastically limited the option to use it during a free trial.
It was then however, according to Kumar, that BrowserStack attempted to sign up for a subscription with a generic email like “test@browserstack.com”.
Deque objected since such a generic email meant the account would be open to many multiple users. In response, BrowserStack acquired a range of subscriptions from Deque Systems, which allowed them access to the entire product.
Kumar stressed it is the first time ever Deque Systems has filed such a large lawsuit.
She expects more information to come out as the litigation continues regarding how BrowserStack is allegedly “poaching” Deque Systems’ customers by claiming its product is much better than Kumar’s firm.
She is convinced that the best outcome of any lawsuit would be for BrowserStack to end all its alleged illegal activities and compensate Deque Systems accordingly.
“Right the wrong, stop stealing and selling things based on what you have stolen from us and pay for the damages,” Kumar concluded.
When approached by QA Financial, both Infosys and BrowserStack declined to comment.
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