Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has suffered a major legal setback after the US Supreme Court refused to hear its appeal in a seven‑year trade‑secrets dispute with DXC Technology, effectively ending the case and leaving the Indian IT major liable for damages that could total around $220 million once interest and legal costs are included. The court’s decision leaves intact a $168‑million damages award issued earlier, marking the second time in under three years that the Supreme Court has declined to intervene in a major intellectual‑property case involving TCS.
The dispute traces back to a 2018 outsourcing deal worth roughly $2 billion between TCS and insurance giant Transamerica. As part of the agreement, TCS absorbed around 2,200 Transamerica employees who had extensive experience with two life‑insurance administration platforms — Vantage‑One and CyberLife — owned and licensed by Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), which later became part of DXC Technology.
CSC alleged that TCS used insider familiarity with these proprietary systems, along with access to technical documentation and operational processes, to accelerate development of a competing life‑insurance software platform. The 2019 lawsuit filed in a federal court in Dallas argued that TCS avoided significant research and development costs by leveraging knowledge tied to CSC’s systems rather than building capabilities independently.
TCS consistently denied wrongdoing, maintaining that the information it accessed was not confidential and that its conduct complied with the law. The company argued that its access to the software was legitimate and that it had not improperly acquired or used trade secrets.
A key legal question in the case — whether a defendant’s gains from allegedly using protected information can form the basis for damages even without direct financial loss to the plaintiff — became central to appeals and ultimately reached the Supreme Court, which has now declined to take it up.