Fort Worth, TX — Wednesday, October 16, 2013: OMD Corporation and La Crosse Management Systems, Inc., subsidiaries of ECi Software Solutions (www.ECiSolutions.com), a leader in industry-specific information technology solutions, today announced that the Delaware Court of Chancery has ruled in their favor in a lawsuit against MWA Intelligence, Inc. for materially breaching the confidentiality obligations in the 2007 license agreement regarding La Crosse’s TechRaptor™ and OMD’s Service-On-The-Go™ software. The Delaware Court of Chancery’s ruling affirms OMD’s and La Crosse’s termination of the agreement, opening the door for their re-entry into the remote service software arena. As a result, Digital Gateway, Inc. has recently acquired the Remote Tech™ service solution from Tech AnyWare, LLC.

“We are extremely pleased with the outcome of the Delaware litigation involving MWA,” said Laryssa Alexander, President of ECi’s Office Equipment Division. “Litigation like this is always a last resort, but MWA’s disregard for its confidentiality obligations under the agreement left us no choice but to enforce our rights. The court granted us the relief we were seeking: termination of the agreement and the return of our software. The real winners here are our customers, who will once again have better and more cost-effective options for their remote service software needs.”

In April 2012, OMD, La Crosse and other ECi companies filed suit against MWA in Delaware after MWA included the confidential license agreement as part of a public filing in a competing lawsuit in California and then, through its attorneys, provided a copy of the complaint and the license agreement to a noted industry analyst who published an article quoting extensively from the confidential terms of the agreement. The agreement contained terms stating it was confidential and could not be disclosed to any third party without the other parties’ consent. The Delaware Court of Chancery determined that MWA’s conduct was a material breach of the agreement and that OMD and La Crosse’s termination was proper.

In its opinion, the Delaware Court of Chancery determined, among other things, that MWA “…ignored its obligation to exercise reasonable care to protect the Confidential Information in the Agreement. Rather MWA orchestrated the dissemination of Confidential Information throughout the industry…” The Court also noted that “MWA has not attempted to cure its breach…” and that it was motivated “not merely by self-interest but by an intent to harm” OMD and La Crosse. Lastly, the Court said in reaching its conclusions that it took “seriously the fact that … MWA falsely denied” providing the agreement to media sources within the industry. The court noted that, “at worst, [Mike] Stramaglio intentionally misrepresented the facts as he knew them.”

“MWA’s material breach of its confidentiality obligations under the agreement is inexcusable, and we appreciate that the court confirmed that in its ruling,” said Gordon Kushner, Vice President and General Counsel of ECi. “When we confronted MWA about this conduct, they attempted to hide from us and the court how the reporter received the confidential agreement and filed documents before the court falsely representing that it didn’t know how the reporter received the agreement. This is not the kind of business partner OMD, La Crosse or any of the ECi companies wants to have.”

The Delaware court did provide MWA with a nominal damages award of $190,000.00 in connection with certain conduct of ECi, OMD, La Crosse and Digital Gateway in connection with ECi’s acquisition of DGI and related divestiture of the Remote Tech remote service software, but relative to the $25 million in damages being sought by MWA in the case, the award is immaterial to the ECi parties and evidences that the court realized what MWA’s case was really all about.

“Anyone reading the court’s opinion will see for themselves who prevailed here,” said Ron Books, President and CEO of ECi. “MWA sought nothing more than to harm ECI and our office equipment group by willfully violating its confidentiality obligations, then tried to hold us hostage for $25 million. The court saw through MWA’s attempted money-grab in rewarding them less than 1% of what they were alleging as damages, found that their conduct was so egregious as to deem the agreement terminated, and took special note in its opinion of the behavior of MWA executives. The real winners here are our customers, who will see a renewed focus on remote service solutions from ECi, through Remote Tech, Service-on-the-Go and TechRaptor.”

For more information about the case, please contact ECI’s Vice President and General Counsel, Gordon Kushner, at gkushner@ecisolutions.com.

About ECi

The ECi Software Solutions family of companies provides business and e-commerce solutions, offering on-premise and cloud-based technologies. For 30+ years, ECi companies have served the manufacturing, office equipment, office supplies, contract office furniture, lumber and building materials, hardware and jan/san sectors. Privately held, ECi is headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, USA, with offices and companies throughout the U.S., Australia, England and the Netherlands. For more information, email info@ecisolutions.com, visit www.ECiSolutions.com, or call (800) 959-3367.

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