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  • The State

    Federal jury awards Lexington SC company $96.7 million in stolen trade secrets case

    By John Monk,

    13 hours ago

    https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=08M6eV_0uyupIz400

    A federal jury has awarded $96.7 million to the parent company of a Lexington County fiber optics manufacturer in a case involving stolen trade secrets.

    The jury in the case deliberated about three hours before returning its verdict in favor of Prysmian Cables & Systems USA, LLC, late last week. The company is headquartered in Kentucky and has a plant in Lexington County, South Carolina, that employs about 230 people.

    At times during the three-week trial at the Columbia federal courthouse, the public was cleared from the courtroom so Prysmian’s technological trade secrets could be aired before the jury.

    Prysmian manufactures optical fibers and telecommunications cables used in broadband data transmission and communications. According to the S.C. Department of Commerce, Prysmian has approximately 780 employees in South Carolina.

    Defendants in the case were Sterlite Technologies, a Columbia-headquartered company specializing in optical fiber and cables, and Stephen Szymanski, a former Prysmian senior vice president, who went to work for Sterlite. Sterlite directly competes with Prysmian.

    The jurors awarded Prysmian $96.5 million. They also found Szymanski personally liable in the amount of $200,000. It declined to award punitive damages.

    Sterlite, which has a manufacturing plant in Lugoff, said it would “aggressively appeal” the verdict. “(Sterlite) strongly believes the verdict is not supported by the evidence and testimony presented in the case and the case was filed for anti-competitive purposes only,” a company press release said.

    Lawyers for Sterlite and Szymanski did not immediately respond to a request for comment, including whether they plan to appeal.

    Szymanski had worked for Prysmian for nearly 15 years and ran the company’s telecommunications unit, which did approximately half a billion dollars worth of business a year, according to testimony in a pretrial deposition Szymanski gave. His last day with the company was in August 2020, when he gave a Prysmian official his company laptop, automobile and other materials.

    Szymanski is an influential player in the fiber cable industry. In his deposition, Szymanski said he was followed by nearly 5,000 people in the fiber industry on his LinkedIn account.

    “At trial, Prysmian ultimately proved that Sterlite had taken thousands and thousands of pages of Prysmian’s confidential information and trade secrets,” according to a Prysmian press release sent out after the trial.

    “The materials in Sterlite’s possession included information about Prysmian’s customers, information about Prysmian’s newest products, and information about Prysmian’s plans to expand its manufacturing plants. Much of the information was found in the possession of not just Szymanski and Sterlite, but also in the possession of executives at Sterlite’s global headquarters in Pune, India,” the press release said.

    Prysmian filed suit in federal court in Columbia in June 2021, accusing Sterlite and Szymanski of misappropriating trade secrets and giving them to Sterlite. Sterlite and Szymanski denied the allegations.

    Globally, Prysmian is the largest cable solutions provider in the world, with more than 32,000 employees, 108 production plants and 26 R&D centers in over 50 countries. In 2023, global sales exceeded €15 billion, a company press release said.

    Attorneys representing Prysmian included Susan McWilliams and Sara Svedberg of Columbia; Deborah Adams and David Skidmore of Ohio; and Peter Cummins of Kentucky.

    Attorneys representing the defendants included Lyndey Bryant, Eugene Matthews, Anthony Robollo and Chandra Stallworth, all of Columbia.

    Federal Judge Sherri Lydon presided.

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