shutterstock_1108966937_jhvephoto-1
21 May 2020Sarah Morgan

Software company accuses Lenovo of stealing trade secrets

Chinese company  Lenovo has “cut-and-pasted” source code to build its online community platform, according to a suit filed by San Francisco-based  Khoros.

Software company Khoros, in a suit filed at the US District Court for the Northern District of California on Tuesday, May 19, accused Lenovo of copying its HTML source code for several of Lenovo’s “copycat” site components.

According to the complaint, Lenovo had used Khoros’ community platform over a period of 13 years, before launching its own community webpage in February 2020.

Khoros claimed that Lenovo had taken its Studio Tool—a “highly detailed and hard-won menu of community website options” which it classes as a trade secret—and reverse-engineered its back-office code.

The Studio Tool would provide an unauthorised user with a multi-year head start in developing and optimising its own community platform, said Khoros, with an associated cost savings in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

“A customer with sufficient technical resources (like Lenovo) in possession of the Studio Tool could reverse-engineer a substantially similar version of the back-office software based upon the clues provided by the internal communications and commands between the Studio Tool and that software,” added the suit.

In addition to Lenovo’s alleged “cut-and-paste job” with Khoros's public-facing code, the Chinese company also reportedly reverse-engineered Khoros's Studio Tool and its proprietary back-office website architecture, application program interfaces, and macros.

The copying was obvious, said Khoros, as the code Lenovo used contained vestiges of older Khoros code unique to its site that had not been completely “cleaned up” over time.

In March, Khoros sent a cease-and-desist letter to Lenovo, directing it to permanently decommission the new community, but received no response.

Khoros’ counsel, in anticipation of litigation, sent a preservation letter to Lenovo on April 3, instructing Lenovo to preserve all data associated with its creation, development, and implementation of the community platform.

The suit added: “Tellingly, Lenovo disregarded Khoros's preservation letter when it began destroying evidence of its wrongdoing by scrubbing its community's forward-facing HTML code and deleting all code segments mentioning Khoros or incorporating language unique to Khoros's Studio Tool.”

Khoros is seeking injunctive relief and damages.

Did you enjoy reading this story?  Sign up to our free daily newsletters and get stories sent like this straight to your inbox.

Today's top stories

Fed Circuit reverses McRO animation patent ruling again

INTA annual meeting to go virtual

IP Australia unveils new COVID-19 TM helpline

Already registered?

Login to your account

To request a FREE 2-week trial subscription, please signup.
NOTE - this can take up to 48hrs to be approved.

Two Weeks Free Trial

For multi-user price options, or to check if your company has an existing subscription that we can add you to for FREE, please email Adrian Tapping at atapping@newtonmedia.co.uk


More on this story

article
1 May 2020   Spotify stole trade secrets to build its user-generated advertising platform by “dangling partnership prospects” in front of a Canadian audio company, according to a newly-filed lawsuit.
Patents
6 August 2020   The US International Trade Commission is investigating Chinese electronics manufacturer Lenovo off the back of a patent infringement complaint from Nokia.
Copyright
19 March 2021   A Texas jury has awarded $152 million to US software company ResMan, after one of its clients was found liable for misappropriation of trade secrets to develop a rival product.