Kreatio Software Private Limited v. International Data Group, Inc. (D. Mass. 23-cv-10273).

Kreatio sued IDG last year, accusing the company of copyright infringement and state and federal trade secret misappropriation in connection with Kreatio’s “OneReg” and “Hermes” software.  After failing to develop a GDPR-compliant system in time for the deadlines set by the European Union for compliance, IDG licensed Kreatio’s software, which creates GDPR-compliant registration forms for demand generation and data services, on a Software-As-A-Service basis.  In connection with the license, Kreatio provided IDG with access to a read-only replica (or “black box”) version of the Hermes program for troubleshooting purposes, subject to an agreement that IDG would not develop software based on Hermes.  As a part of this agreement, IDG recognized that Hermes was a valuable trade secret of Kreatio.  In March 2020, IDG terminated the license, and Kreatio asserts that IDG had developed its own GDPR-compliant software by copying and creating a derivative work of Hermes.

Judge Talwani denied IDG’s motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted.  She noted that IDG disputed the factual allegations of the complaint, but that for purposes of a Rule 12(b)(6) motion she must take all of the factual allegations of the complaint as true.  With respect to copyright infringement, Kreatio pled registration of its copyright and pled that IDG had access, and that the IDG software was substantially similar which was enough to allege copyright infringement.  Substantial similarity was based on the IDG software being interoperable with Kreatio’s OneReg program.  Judge Talwani rejected IDG’s contention that the complaint needed to identify specific, exact portions of the Hermes program that were allegedly copied.  She found that the complaint sufficiently raised a reasonable expectation that discovery would reveal evidence of copyright infringement, particularly given that Kreatio did not have access to IDG’s underlying code at that point in time.

With respect to the trade secret claims, Judge Talwani found that Kreatio had set forth the trade secret alleged to have been misappropriated – the Hermes software – with sufficient particularity to survive the motion to dismiss.