A team of Keker, Van Nest & Peters attorneys secured a settlement earlier this month in a years-long trade secrets misappropriation case between their client, Denver-based SRS Acquiom and PNC Bank.
The Keker team, led by partners Warren Braunig and Michelle Ybarra, also included partners Ben Rothstein and Katie Lynn Joyce and associates Victor Yu, Luke Apfield, Catherine Porto and Amrutha Dorai.
The lawsuit, filed in 2019, alleged two former employees of financial transactions software company SRS retained and used confidential trade secrets in their new roles at PNC to “unfairly” compete with SRS’s online M&A payments-and-escrow business. SRS had created a series of software tools to support companies engaged in M&A transactions.
Before the suit, PNC allegedly brought on the former SRS employees to direct the company’s development on how to build a suite of competing products.
The Keker team spent nearly five years on the case, undertaking two evidentiary hearings, 42 depositions and 630 docket entries.
CORRECTION NOTE: this article was updated on Jan. 17 to note the settlement was secured earlier this month and to correct the spelling of SRS Acquiom. Law Week regrets the error.