Australian Mutual Qudos Bank is preparing to engage in a full-blooded legal battle with Infosys, accusing the Indian software house of copyright infringement, breach of contract and misuse of confidential information.
Qudos Bank commenced preliminary discovery proceedings against Infosys in November 2018, seeking documents in support of its concern that Infosys may have misused Qudos’ intellectual property and confidential information in developing software for another financial services group, Australian Military Bank (AMB).
Qudos Bank Chairman Andrew Leithhead says: “Qudos Bank had engaged Infosys to build a fully integrated banking platform, including core banking, customer relationship management, online banking, mobile application and other systems. During the period Infosys was working on the Qudos Bank contract we became aware of striking similarities between the software developed for our project and the AMB project. This made us very concerned that our intellectual property may have been misused and our confidence violated.”
Following Qudos Bank’s Federal Court application, Infosys produced some documents and computer code as part of this action but resisted producing other documents that Qudos Bank sought.
The bank took the issue back to the court, which last week found that Qudos Bank had reasonable grounds to believe that its rights had been violated and ordered Infosys to provide the additional documentation.
In the 20 May 2019 judgment, Justice Stephen Burley said there were “common elements within the structure” of the AMB and Qudos codes, and “unexplained references to Qudos” in the AMB code.
Infosys was ordered to produce documents recording the development and preparation of the AMB software and additional source code for two Infosys software projects to Qudos Bank.
Says Leithhead: “We welcome Justice Burley’s decision and look forward to reviewing documents produced by Infosys to enable Qudos Bank to assess the nature and extent of any infringement by Infosys of Qudos Bank’s rights. Qudos Bank is committed to protecting its valuable intellectual property against any potential misuse”.
Infosys has responded with a belligerent statement: "The company denies any allegations of wrongdoing and will vigorously defend itself in any litigation. The company will not disclose any information pertaining to the Qudos contract in adherence to our confidentiality.”