On September 7, 2018, a judge for the Eastern District of Michigan granted a motion for partial summary judgment in favor of defendant Versata Software Inc., after finding that Versata owns trade secrets embedded in automotive configuration software licensed to plaintiff Ford Motor Company.
The judge left the issue of whether Ford misappropriated Versata’s trade secrets to be decided at trial. The case began in 2015, when Ford sought a declaratory judgment that the company’s internally developed software, PDO, neither infringed nor misappropriated Versata’s patents, copyrights, and trade secrets.
