India-based Tata Consultancy Services failed on Monday to overturn a $168 million judgment awarded to DXC Technology over allegations of stealing trade secrets linked to life-insurance software. The US Supreme Court declined to hear Tata's challenge to the damages ruling from a lower court.

The dispute originated from a 2019 lawsuit filed in Dallas federal court by DXC, based in Ashburn, Virginia. The company alleged that Tata had hired approximately 2,200 former Transamerica employees and leveraged their familiarity with proprietary software and confidential information developed by DXC's predecessor, Computer Sciences Corp, to develop a rival life-insurance platform. Tata maintained that the information in question was not confidential and that access to the software was lawful.

A jury rendered an advisory ruling in 2023 recommending $210 million in damages, which U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr subsequently reduced to $168 million—comprising $56 million in compensatory damages and $112 million in punitive damages. The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed this decision in 2025.

Tata had contended that the damages structure violated US trade secret law, arguing DXC should have been required to demonstrate actual financial losses before recovering unjust enrichment damages. The company also challenged the punitive component as disproportionate. Under applicable law, trade secret damages may address both the plaintiff's losses and the defendant's wrongful gains from the theft.

DXC rejected these arguments, stating that the appeals court had correctly applied established legal principles and that no basis existed for the Supreme Court to intervene in what amounted to a factual matter already resolved by lower courts.