GREENVILLE, S.C., Nov. 20, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- A federal judge today ordered a Greenville-area businessman and his company to pay more than $4.6 million in damages and costs for misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of fiduciary duty, and other misconduct related to the sale of his formerGreenville employer in 2008.
The order, against J. Adam Shirley and his company, Prism Content Solutions LLC, stems from the sale of the assets of Cox CustomMedia Inc., a Greenville publishing company that had employed him as a senior sales executive. Shortly after the sale, Shirley abruptly resigned from CustomMedia to form a competing company and was accused by CustomMedia's acquirer, Uhlig LLC, of taking trade secrets, customer lists, thousands of computer files and other CustomMedia intellectual property in breach of his employment agreement and South Carolina law.
Uhlig welcomed today's damage award, emphasizing the critical value of intellectual property and electronic data in the Internet era. It also expressed hope that the size of the award, which includes punitive damages, would help deter misconduct in similar cases.
Comments