By Blake Brittain
WASHINGTON, May 22 (Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court on Friday revived $82.2 million of a $104.6 million verdict that Versata Software won against Ford for breaching a licensing contract and misappropriating trade secrets.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reinstated damages that a jury in Detroit had awarded to Versata in 2022 after finding that Ford violated their contract, and sent the case back for a new trial to determine the proper amount of damages for Ford’s trade-secret theft.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Leitman had overturned the verdict in 2023.
Spokespeople for Ford and Versata did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Versata, based in Austin, Texas, said it licensed its automotive software to Ford from 1998 to 2015, helping the automaker’s engineers and marketing agents collaborate on and design vehicles with “seamless real time updates” worldwide. It said that Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford began copying its software after growing weary of paying millions of dollars in annual licensing fees.
The jury awarded Versata $82.2 million for breach of contract and $22.4 million for misappropriation of trade secrets. Leitman overturned the verdict after finding that Versata had not offered enough evidence to let jurors calculate the damages accurately.
The Federal Circuit said on Friday, however, that the jury had calculated the breach-of-contract damages with “reasonable certainty.”
(Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Kevin Liffey)
