Financial analytic software firm Suite takes Currenex, State Street to court over copyright infringement
The defendants allegedly misappropriated Suite’s intellectual property, including its source-code, with the matter taken to the New York Southern District Court.
Suite LLC, a vendor of quantitative financial analytic software, is targeting Currenex, Inc., State Street Corporation and its wholly-owned subsidiary State Street Global Markets LLC, as well as Frost & Fire Ltd. in a copyright infringement action at the New York Southern District Court.
As per court filings, seen by FinanceFeeds, Suite has launched the case over the alleged efforts by the Defendants “to infringe upon and misappropriate Suite’s intellectual property, including its source-code”.
The case is based on events dating back to September 2011, when Suite signed an agreement (the document was seen by FinanceFeeds) with State Street and Currenex providing the latter with a perpetual license of Suite’s ALib Analytic Library (ALib), analytical software used for pre-execution pricing, risk management and valuations on bonds, interest-rate swaps and related rates derivatives products, including options and credit derivatives. The license was limited to State Street’s and Currenex’s use and precluded resale or sharing with third parties.
Currenex and State Street allegedly distributed Suite’s copyrighted, confidential software and source-code to third parties (including an existing customer of Suite, “TradingScreen,” and a competitor of Suite, Frost) without the consent or authorization of Suite, thereby breaching the confidentiality provision and the restrictions stipulated in the contract.
In particular, Bleron Baraliu, an individual at Currenex and State Street who was involved in negotiating the agreement signed in September 2011, abruptly terminated the agreement one year after it was executed and then, shortly thereafter, left to run Frost, a competitor to Suite that he founded while working for State Street. Frost is alleged to have improperly used and distributed Suite’s copyrights and created derivative works from Suite’s copyrighted source-code and software for use in its competitive risk management business. Specifically, Frost distributed Suite’s copyrighted source-code and software (that was licensed to State Street) directly to TradingScreen.
Suite charges all of the defendants in the case with copyright infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets. In addition, Currenex and State Street are accused of breach of contract, whereas Frost is accused of unjust enrichment.
Accordingly, Suite seeks to: (1) permanently enjoin Defendants’ copyright infringement and misappropriation of Suite’s trade secrets; and (2) recover its damages arising from Defendants’ acts as well as punitive damages.
The case is captioned SUITE, LLC v. CURRENEX, INC. et al (1:17-cv-06920). Currenex and State Street are given until October 30, 2017 to answer to the plaintiff’s complaint.
