|
Manufacturer files charges over trade secrets
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
Armored-vehicle manufacturer Force Protection Inc. is suing competitor Protected Vehicles Inc., charging the latter with stealing its trade secrets.
The 29-page lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Charleston on Aug. 21, asserts that Garth Barrett and other former Force Protection executives who left the Ladson-based company two years ago to found Protected Vehicles left with more than their contributions to their 401(k) plans. They misappropriated confidential and proprietary information, according to the lawsuit.
The suit states that misappropriated information includes design details related to Force Protection’s ballistic- and blast-protected vehicles, as well as lists of suppliers for the raw materials that go into the armored, mine-resistant vehicles.
In court papers, Force Protection’s attorneys, Anne Louise Ross and John H. Tiller of the Charleston law firm Haynsworth Sinkler Boyd P.A., said Barrett, a founder of Force Protection and also, at various times, its president, chief technology officer and facility security officer, “had unlimited access to the trade secrets and confidential information belonging to Force Protection relating to all aspects of (its) various armored vehicle products including research, design, development, manufacturing, marketing, sales and testing.”
Force Protection charges PVI relied on that confidential information to “unfairly compete with the armored vehicles produced by Force Protection, in particular, the Buffalo, Cougar and the Cheetah.”
Barrett’s co-defendants in the civil suit are Thomas Thebes, Force Protection’s former vice president of finance, and Paul Palmer, the company’s former production planner.
In all, the North Charleston-based PVI, which last month announced it was laying off more than 230 workers, must answer to 11 counts. The allegations filed against the defendants include computer fraud, copyright infringement, violating the South Carolina Trade Secrets Act, torturous interference with contractual relations, unfair trade practices, breach of contract and civil conspiracy.
Force Protection is seeking injunctive relief, return of computer hard drives and other storage media it believes were taken from its facility by the defendants, damages and recovery of its court costs and attorneys’ fees.
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.
|
E-Mail This Article
Printer-Friendly Version