A recent federal court case out of Texas demonstrates the importance of forum selection clauses when negotiating contracts, according to P.J. Kee of Jones Walker. The case, Wellogix v. SAP America, centers around trade secret theft. The two entities agreed to develop software for oil and gas operators, explains Kee, but shortly after the i’s were dotted and t’s crossed, the relationship between the parties disintegrated. Wellogix claimed its technology, which had been shared with SAP, had been misappropriated.
From there, it got messy. Wellogix sued for trade secret theft, breach of contract and other torts, but its claims were dismissed because the original contract contained a forum selection clause naming Germany as the jurisdiction for settling disputes. There it obtained a multimillion-dollar verdict, but a few years later the parties were at it again: SAP sued Wellogix regarding patents, and Wellogix counterclaimed with its trade secret theft claims again, this time in the U.S. SAP tried to get the counterclaim dismissed with the forum selection clause it previously relied on.
