Litera has filed an injunction against Kira’s former vice president of global product sales, Kennan Samman and DeepJudge, the startup he joined this month, alleging that the defendants have breached a non-compete agreement and non-disclosure clause prohibiting Kennan from sharing any proprietary information.
Kira was acquired by Litera in 2021. The complaint, which was first surfaced by Law.com Radar, is being brought by Kira (US) Inc in relation to Kira’s software; its integration with Litera’s content library solution Clause Companion; and a number of generative AI applications being developed by Freedom Solutions Group, which is Litera’s Illinois parent company.
The complaint asks for a temporary restraining order and/or preliminary injunction against the defendants, plus damages, alleging that Samman had access to confidential information in respect to all of the above; that he is bound by legally enforceable noncompete and non-disclosure obligations; that he forwarded confidential information to his personal email prior to resigning; and that DeepJudge is a direct competitor of Kira and Clause Companion.
DeepJudge is a Swiss-founded startup that enables legal professionals to search the document management system using natural language, based on proprietary large language model technology. The company announced on 13 July that it has hired Samman as its chief revenue officer to kick-start its global expansion, and the claim was filed against the defendants on the same day.
According to the complaint filed in the US District Court Eastern District of Virginia, when Samman announced his intention to join DeepJudge in June, Kira, through counsel, reminded him of his post-employment obligations but the defendants “declined to honor Samman’s noncompete agreements and discontinue Samman’s employment.” It adds: “Instead, Samman and DeepJudge sought to differentiate Kira’s and DeepJudge’s products and markets in an apparent effort to argue that DeepJudge is not a ‘competitor’ of Kira within the meaning of the noncompete agreements.”
The complaint contains a table comparing the functionality of both Kira and Kira + Clause Companion to DeepJudge, identifying what it says are a significant number of overlaps including that the software finds clauses and data points from legal documents; that it can search and review documents using natural language; and that it allows users to search for content stored within the document management system.
Commenting on the complaint, a spokesperson for Litera told Legal IT Insider: “While we would have preferred to resolve this amicably, we were not able to do so despite our efforts. That left us with no choice but to file suit to protect our business.”
We have reached out to Samman and DeepJudge for comment.
caroline@legaltechnology.con
You may want to read the Opposition brief Kira….you’re done for….