Viken Calls on AS&E to Immediately Drop Its Lawsuit After AS&E Loses Appeal
BURLINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Viken Detection, pioneer of x-ray imaging and analytical devices, today announced that AS&E lost its appeals court petition to reverse AS&E’s prior loss in unsuccessfully obtaining a preliminary injunction against Viken.
AS&E is currently suing Viken and its CTO, Dr. Peter Rothschild. AS&E’s papers wrongly describe Viken’s use of a non-proprietary software interface, “AusSim,” as trade secret misappropriation. In June, a trial judge rejected this attempt, denied AS&E any preliminary relief, and ruled that AS&E had not ”demonstrat[ed] a likelihood of success on the merits of demonstrating a protected trade secret.” Last week, a Justice of the Massachusetts Appeals Court upheld this ruling, citing numerous reasons the judge rightly concluded that “AS&E did not meet its burden of showing that AusSim is a protected trade secret. Simply put, AS&E offered no evidence of any specific measures that it took to maintain AusSim's secrecy,” a basic element of AS&E’s case.
AS&E’s complaint admits that AS&E had no independent “evidence that Rothschild had used AS&E’s proprietary or confidential information to develop [Viken’s] product” until it saw the testimony of the CEO of Videray Technologies, who Viken is currently suing for trade secret misappropriation. Videray’s CEO defended his actions by wrongly accusing Dr. Rothschild of using AS&E IP, and AS&E in turn based its case largely on the CEO’s false testimony.
As Viken already disclosed, Videray’s CEO hacked into Dr. Rothschild’s files, inserted AS&E materials, and planted evidence in Viken’s federal lawsuit in an apparent attempt to support his false testimony with false evidence. Videray’s CEO responded by pleading the Fifth and invoking his right against self-incrimination. Now Viken has obtained overwhelming proof that, days before leaving Viken, Videray’s CEO removed a hard drive with trade secrets for Viken’s HBI-120 scanner, among other highly confidential documents, despite falsely denying any IP theft in his testimony.
“Two courts have told AS&E that its trade secret case has no likely path to legal success. Its case rests on a discredited individual who clearly stole from Viken and lied about it,” stated Jim Ryan, CEO of Viken Detection. “AS&E should drop its lawsuit immediately.”