I2 Files Suit Against Palantir Technologies - Misappropriation Trade Secrets

http://www.i2group.com/uk/about-i2/news/media-advisory-from-i2

by elblanco • 16 years ago

20 5 16 years ago

metachris• 16 years ago

Sounds like an attempt by i2 to crush a new competitor with a very vague lawsuit. Hard to tell if it has any merit.

davidu• 16 years ago

Actually the press release seems relatively specific in their claims. I'd expect the actual complaint to be even more explicit.

If it's true, it will not be very hard to prove.

As an aside, this stuff happens quite often. It's inappropriate and should never be condoned by anyone in an organization. I think people doing it often forget that these kind of actions can be considered illegal in some cases and jurisdictions, or at the very least a serious violation of licensing agreements.

_delirium• 16 years ago

It's interesting that they were caught and are being sued. My impression is that this happens all the time in hardware, for example: companies are often using somewhat shady means to get early copies of competitors' prototypes to do teardowns on. Obviously they don't just go to their competitor, identify themselves honestly, and ask to buy a copy. It's usually via front companies, or via contacts at legitimate companies who'll get dev samples legitimately but slip you one, or via side deals with Taiwanese or Chinese fabs, who'll set one aside for you. AFAIK that almost never gets caught/prosecuted.

jasonlotito• 16 years ago

Seems oddly appropriate that Palantir would be accused of stealing secrets.

elblanco• 16 years ago

The filed complaint: http://www.scribd.com/doc/36371667/i2-v-palantir-080910

For those not in the know, i2 is the maker of what's essentially the Microsoft word of this particular industry. They're the defacto standard.

i2 is also well known for being insanely hard to work with both with customers as well as by system integrators. Palantir has been vacuuming up a lot of their business recently and they're really starting to get kicked out of some traditional spaces they normally have a safe monopoly in.

One way that's being done is through interoperability with i2's products. Folks in the community have long wondered how that was done since i2 generally safeguards their file specifications pretty tightly and is very careful about who they license to. The assumption was that Palantir, with the huge resources at their disposal simply put a team on it to reverse engineer it.

This suit is largely about this if I understand correctly and the claim is that Palantir didn't reverse engineer it, but instead used an illegally licensed SDK, purchased through a shell company setup by a Palantir employee in order to trick i2 into licensing their SDK to a competitor when they had no intention of doing so.

Actually, the whole scheme sounds like a great corporate espionage demo for both company's products.

I2 Files Suit Against Palantir Technologies - Misappropriation Trade Secrets

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