The end of February brought with it a new copyright infringement filing in the District of Puerto Rico. The case is Abarca Health, LLC, et al v. Pharmpix Corp., et al, 3:11-cv-01218 (GAG).
The facts, according to the complaint and memorandum for preliminary injunction are straightforward enough. Plaintiff developed its own software, called “Pharmacy Agent”, to operate the pharmacy benefits manager services and Prescription Drug Plans (riveting stuff, I know). It secured non-disclosure agreements from all parties involved in the software development and, in due time, registered its copyright on the source code (which falls under a literary work, but good luck passing it through the Patent Office).
What happened next? Well, according to the complaint, some of the people involved in the software development and in the company jumped ship, made their own competitor company and (allegedly) ripped off the software and called it their “own proprietary software”.
A quick read from the Court’s docket shows that plaintiff’s have moved for expedited discovery and will seek to show the source codes to the Court. As a former computer programmer, I can tell you that if the defendant copied off the software, the source code will be very revealing about it. After all, there are just so many ways to code an algorithm (and most of the time, plagiarists are so lazy that they leave the original comments in the source code in their own version). It doesn’t help the defendant’s case that a few key people participated in the original development, thus making access much more provable.
If I read the Docket right, the hearing should be this week. Knowing the plaintiff’s lawyers, it should be a good one.
Update: Defendant’s have filed a motion to dismiss, alleging (among other things) that their source code predates that of the plaintiffs. The motion to dismiss can be downloaded here.
