US Supreme Court rejects Tata challenge to $168 million award in trade secrets case

By Blake Brittain

Mon, June 15, 2026 astatine 8:49 AM CDT 2 min read

By Blake Brittain

WASHINGTON, June 15 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court turned distant connected Monday a bid by India-based Tata Consultancy Services to ‌overturn a $168 cardinal grant won against it by DXC Technology for allegedly ‌stealing commercialized secrets related to life-insurance software.

Tata had appealed aft a little tribunal upheld a ​judge's determination to acceptable the grant astatine $56 cardinal successful compensatory damages and $112 cardinal successful punitive damages to Ashburn, Virginia-based DXC. Tata had argued that the damages grant could not beryllium justified nether U.S. instrumentality regarding commercialized secrets.

DXC's predecessor Computer Sciences Corp, ‌or CSC, licensed its bundle ⁠to security institution Transamerica successful the 1990s. Its 2019 lawsuit, filed successful Dallas national court, said that Tata hired 2,200 ⁠Transamerica employees and utilized their entree to CSC's bundle and cognition of its proprietary accusation to physique a competing life-insurance platform.

Tata denied the allegations, told the tribunal ​that the ​information astatine contented was not concealed and ​argued that it accessed the ‌software legally.

A assemblage successful 2023 decided successful an advisory verdict - a nonbinding determination fixed to a justice - that Tata should wage DXC $210 cardinal for willfully stealing its commercialized secrets. U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr reduced the projected damages grant to $168 cardinal successful 2024. The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ‌upheld Starr's determination successful 2025.

U.S. instrumentality concerning commercialized ​secrets allows for monetary damages to code ​both a plaintiff's losses from the ​theft of commercialized secrets and a defendant's "unjust enrichment" from it. ‌The grant to DXC was based ​entirely connected unjust ​enrichment.

Tata told the Supreme Court successful a filing that DXC should not person won unjust enrichment damages without proving it suffered existent losses arsenic ​well. Tata besides argued ‌that the punitive damages grant was excessive.

DXC responded that "nothing astir the ​court of appeals' fact-bound exertion of settled instrumentality warrants further review."

(Reporting ​by Blake Brittain; Editing by Will Dunham)