Chat-bot maker LivePerson wins lawsuit against call-center outfit [24]7.ai
On Thursday, a jury in a federal court in Oakland, California, found call center biz [24]7.ai – as in,24/7 – guilty of unfair competition and stealing trade secrets from chatbot maker LivePerson, awarding the company more than $30m in damages. The case was filed in 2014. In its complaint [ PDF], LivePerson described how its partnership with 24/7 went bad. LivePerson provides online engagement technology, which takes the form of chatbots that corporate clients add to their websites to field questions, gather interaction data, and reduce customer support costs. 24/7 initially offered contract call center personnel to businesses, for times when a human touch is required. It subsequently branched out into engagement technology, becoming a competitor, and therein lies the lawsuit. In 2006, when there was less product overlap, the companies entered into a contractual relationship, subject to confidentiality and non-competition clauses, to provide business customers with access to both automated and human support systems – because chatbots work better with a sentient failover. In the years that followed,24/7 learned about LivePerson’s live interaction technology and its methods for implementing such systems on websites. Starting around 2012, the complaint says,24/7 began abusing its insider access to copy LivePerson’s technology and proprietary data related to customers Capital One, Optus, and Sears.
