KT Terminals Wins Judgment Against NCR
Jury Verdict Against NCR For Misappropriation of Confidential Information
January 7, 2019 – KT Group a Hong Kong based kiosk manufacturer obtained jury verdicts in the Southern District of New York in its nearly 4-year quest for vindication against NCR Corporation, a publicly traded Fortune 500 company, with assistance of its New York based law firm Garson, Segal, Steinmetz, Fladgate.
The case centered on the design of the SelfServ 90 or SS90, NCR’s award-winning flagship card only self-checkout kiosk which can be seen in Tesco stores in the UK, Muji in Japan, Globus in Russia, SPAR in Europe and airports all across the US.
The jury found that NCR was liable for using or disclosing the mechanical drawings provided by KT under the presumed blanket of confidence provided by the non-disclosure agreements and used it for its own benefit.
Moreover, the jury also found NCR liable for misappropriating the mechanical drawings of KT and in so doing, GS2Law proved to the jury that the NCR team, led by Dusty Lutz, the head of NCR’s retail store transformation division, acted with bad faith i.e. with malice, wilfulness, a dishonest purpose or fraud.
NCR advanced its multiple defences including that the non-disclosure agreements permitted harvesting of information for its own use, and that standard terms and conditions in NCR’s purchase order in it’s supplier system superseded the agreements. GS2Law demonstrated that the defences did not hold water.
This is a rare case where a small company has not only managed to bring a large corporation to task but also to show that a company like NCR and its senior executives had done so willfully and dishonestly.
KT Group has for past four years had to wait for its decision but finally came the day said Kenneth Larsen CEO and we can finally share our success based on the jury verdict which in basis supported what KT Group knew from the onset that its theory that NCR knowingly continued to misappropriate confidential information and breached mutual non disclosure agreement signed by us in good faith from the get-go this further goes to demonstrate that small yet dynamic companies like KT Group are able to set standard for its work high enough that the likes of NCR felt the need to continue using our manufacturing intellectual property even though they breached non disclosure of it which further supports our testament of quality manufactured kiosks.