The Complaint: A Major Financial Services Firm Defends Seven Trading Platform Patents Against Infringement
The plaintiff, a leading stock exchange, filed a lawsuit against the defendant, a competing trading platform provider, for allegedly infringing seven of its patents concerning electronic stock trading. The complaint specifically alleges that several former employees of the plaintiff's company, who were involved with the development of the defendant's trading platform, knowingly infringed on these patents. The patents in question pertain to processes such as closing auction processes, multi-parallel order processing, matching engine performance, and data feed optimizations. The plaintiff claimed that the patents cover important innovations that the company, along with its customers, rely on for reliability, scalability, and transparency.
The Ask: A Testifying Expert with Knowledge of Electronic Financial Trading Platforms
The plaintiff approached WIT to provide an expert well-versed in the technology and processes described in several patents at the heart of the dispute. These patents included intricate systems and methodologies such as multi-parallel architecture, electronic market closure processes, optimization techniques for changing data sets, methodologies for order matching, and methods for distributing information. This expert also needed to participate in two parallel disputes.
How WIT Was Able to Meet the Expert Need
In anticipation of an influx of disputes regarding financial technology, WIT actively recruited a diverse group of world-class academics, industry executives, and former government regulators who are dedicated to supporting our clients in fintech litigation. For this case, WIT was able to recommend an expert with more than 10 years of experience as a testifying expert in this field. He had been a professional trader and software developer in the futures and equity markets for more than 25 years, working on exchange order connections and data feeds in great detail. Further, the expert also previously developed proprietary trading systems that included complex order management that interfaced with exchange order books in real-time, making him familiar with the issues addressed in the patents at the center of this dispute.
How WIT's Experts Can Assist in Trading Platform Disputes
As the technology behind trading platforms becomes more advanced and competition involving fintech companies increases, the complexity and frequency of related litigation over intellectual property is expanding. At WIT, we focus on industries with significant risk of litigation and have built a financial technology team of testifying experts comprised of world-class academics, industry executives, and former government regulators to support counsel on matters involving complex financial products, currency exchanges, digital assets, and trading platforms.
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