Austin-based BidPrime Seeks Injunction Against Competitor to Stop Ongoing Theft of Trade Secrets

BidPrime says in its filing for a temporary restraining order in U.S. District Court in Austin that rival company SmartProcure, Inc., based in Deerfield Beach, Fla., has caused BidPrime irreparable harm and significant damages. SmartProcure also goes by the name GovSpend, the lawsuit noted. The filing names as defendants SmartProcure, Jeffrey Rubenstein, CEO and founder of SmartProcure/GovSpend, and Marc DiGeronimo, SmartProcure's sales director.

BidPrime uses proprietary software and data mining technology to gather government bids, RFPs and specifications from public sources in real-time so its clients are the first to know of new bid opportunities.

The lawsuit alleges that the defendants employed fraud to gain access to BidPrime's well-secured systems, then, once inside, began siphoning reams of trade secrets and proprietary data.

Stephen Hetzel, BidPrime's Operations Officer, stressed that nothing has been found to indicate a wholesale breach of client confidential data as a result of the defendants' actions. However, an isolated few accounts were used by the defendants to worm their way inside.

"We have no evidence suggesting customer passwords were stolen directly from BidPrime," Hetzel said. "We have taken steps to notify the isolated customer accounts which were accessed by SmartProcure. As a technology company at our core, we take an abundance of caution in protecting our proprietary data and customer privacy. We're confident that the facts will reveal the bad actors involved and stop SmartProcure/GovSpend's continued attempts to steal our valuable bid data."

In the U.S., corporate espionage and cybercrime continues to be an issue for many companies, government entities, law enforcement, and others. Statista defines cybercrime as, "the use of a computer to commit fraud, illegally traffic intellectual property, steal identities or violate privacy." In addition, Statista noted that there were 1,579 data breaches in the U.S. in 2017.

This lawsuit, brought on behalf of BidPrime by Scott Douglass & McConnico, LLP, seeks a court order that SmartProcure cease any further attempts to illegally access BidPrime's proprietary data and monetary damages.

Contact
Bill Culhane
VP of Marketing
512.430.4242
[email protected]

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SOURCE BidPrime

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