The US Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal from Tata Consultancy Services challenging a $168 million damages award it owes to DXC Technology for allegedly misappropriating trade secrets. The decision leaves intact a lower court ruling that found the India-based company liable for stealing proprietary information related to life-insurance software.

The original lawsuit, filed in Dallas federal court in 2019, centred on allegations that Tata had recruited approximately 2,200 Transamerica employees and leveraged their access to CSC's software—knowledge of which came through Transamerica's licensing arrangement with DXC's predecessor, Computer Sciences Corp—to develop a rival life-insurance platform. Tata contested the claims, asserting the information was not confidential and that it had accessed the software through lawful means.

A jury in 2023 rendered an advisory verdict recommending damages of $210 million for wilful theft of trade secrets. U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr subsequently reduced this 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 upheld this decision in 2025.

Tata's Supreme Court petition argued that DXC should not have received unjust enrichment damages without demonstrating actual losses, and contended that the punitive portion was disproportionately high. U.S. trade secrets law permits awards covering both a plaintiff's losses and a defendant's unjust enrichment from misappropriation. The award to DXC relied entirely on the unjust enrichment basis.

DXC countered that the appellate court's application of established legal principles required no further judicial scrutiny. With the Supreme Court's rejection of the appeal, the damages award against Tata Consultancy Services is now final.