DETROIT — A federal jury this week ordered Ford Motor Co. to pay nearly $105 million in damages to a Texas-based software company for breaching its contract and misappropriating trade secrets.
The case is Versata Software v. Ford Motor Co., in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Michigan, No. 15-10628. It dates back to 2015 and involves a dispute between Ford and Versata over software used in the vehicle development process.
In a lawsuit, Versata alleged that Ford stole trade secrets by developing its own software based on software it had used under a licensing contract with Versata.
The case went to trial, and on Wednesday a jury returned its finding that Ford must pay damages to Versata. The jury determined that Ford breached its contract with Versata by "misusing and disclosing confidential information" and reverse engineering Versata's software for its own commercial use, while finding that Versata did not breach its contract with Ford, according to a verdict form.
Additionally, the jury found that Ford misappropriated three of Versata's trade secrets.
The jury ordered Ford to pay Versata $82,260,000 over the breach of contract, and another $22,386,000 for the trade secret violations, for a total of more than $104.6 million in damages.
Ford said it plans to appeal the verdict.
"While we respect the jury's decision, we believe the facts and the law do not support this outcome," the company said in a statement.
