Upaid returns to haunt Satyam with a fresh set of claims in its fraud case against the Indian IT service provider being fought in a Texas court.
Business Standard gives us latest developments here: the British company Upaid widened its US fraud case against Satyam, based on court admissions by senior Satyam employees, to include claims that the Indian firm failed to provide good title to intellectual property developed for Upaid in the late 90s, intentionally misleading Upaid in the process.
NDTV Profit adds: The new claims include misrepresentation and failure to provide good title, in addition to the allegations of fraud it had earlier brought against Satyam. Satyam, which had issued a statement on the matter last month, said on Monday, 2 June 2008, there were no material developements that merited considerations since then.
Please also check out Shamnad’s TV interview on the issue that was aired on CNBC-TV18 some days ago, where he discusses the possible damages in some detail. Admittedly, mainstream media in India picked up this story about 5 months too late (SpicyIP ran its first story in January 2008), but they’ve made up for it since.
For a detailed backgrounder on the case, please take a look at our earlier posts here and here.
For those less patient, the case thus far in a nutshell: Upaid claims Satyam had provided certain forged documents to support a patent application for a product developed by the Indian company for its British client. This directly affected the validity of the patent. The fraud came to light when Upaid had to withdraw a patents infringement case against two others (telecom giants Verizon and Qualcomm) because of the forgery.
And, I’m sorry for being mean, but I just *have* to quote this from the NDTV Profit report: “Last month, Satyam lost an appeal in the UK court where it sought an injection against the case being heard in the US.” (ouch!)
SpicyIP is trying to dig out details of the Texas litigation, which is scheduled for hearing in January 2009, and will post as and when. Until then, here are some questions to ponder over:
Estimated damages being claimed are fairly large, with Upaid suggesting that Satyam could be made to fork out more than USD 1 billion if found guilty. This is no small number being bandied around, and the right to claim such an amount depends not least on how much Upaid have lost as a result of settling the patent infringement suit against Qualcomm and Verizon. Another fundamental question that arises is about the degree to which irregularity in IP assignment (particularly in the form allegedly present here, i.e. forgery) affects the validity of the patent application itself… At any rate, do you think this story will ever find its way into this book (click on right image for details)?
