Lawsuit launched against former employees and US competitor
Secured Communication Canada 95 Inc SKB
Shares issued 9,970,834 Mar 27 close $0.24
Wed 6 May 98 News Release
Mr. M.G. La Rochelle reports
The company has has filed a $48,000,000 lawsuit in Ontario against Advanced
Encryption Technology of America, a Nasdaq listed competitor (AETI), its
Canadian subsidiary, and three former Secured executives and employees
alledging conversion, trespass to personal property, theft, passing off,
interference with contractual and economic relations, breach of fiduciary
duty and breach of contract, concerning the overnight establishment of
Advanced and its Canadian subsidiary in the encryption marketplace.
According to W. Ernest Miller, Secured chairman, Ken Andruski, the former
CEO of Secured, Scaven Liow, former Secured project director and McKen Mak,
former Secured senior software engineer, virtually cleaned out Secured of
its proprietary Session Key PCMCIA card and related CRYPTIT software
technology, simply changed the name to Access Denied Smartcard and Access
Denied System Software, and went on their way under the Advanced
bannerhead, notwithstanding Advanced having no encryption presence
whatsoever prior to its involvement with Andruski and his associates.
"We have patents, we spent 11 years and $17,000,000 developing our
technology and product suite," says Miller. "For Andruski and his gang to
open up shop selling our product as that of Advanced is beyond
comprehension - they have the same advertising as Secured. We even paid for
Andruski to go to Spain to lock up a distributorship with MidiSonic, S.L.,
and here Advanced and Andruski now announce they have a deal with them."
In addition to the general damage claim, Secured is further seeking
$10,000,000 in punitive damages against the defendants, accounting for
sales profits and injunctive relief which will have the effect, if granted,
of shutting Advanced and the other defendants out of the encryption
marketplace and preventing any further dealings by them with Secured
existing customers and distributors.
"We (Secured) will not stop until Andruski and Co. are out of the
encryption business for good, if not for a very long time, this is a
$3,500,000,000 a year business," says Miller. "And we haven't even yet
commenced a patent enforcement claim under separate actions in the United
States and Canada, independent of this proceeding."
(c) Copyright 1998 Canjex Publishing Ltd. canada-stockwatch.com
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