Apogee Process Improvement, LLC v. OEC, LLC

On 16 June 2025, Apogee Process Improvement, LLC commenced proceedings against OEC, LLC and its trading name ActiveTrust AI in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, alleging misappropriation of trade secrets and breach of contract.

The Complaint asserts that Apogee provides process improvement and disclosure services to the financial services industry and maintains a proprietary database of banking disclosure compliance information, access to which is restricted to its three owners and conditioned on execution of a non-disclosure agreement. The parties entered a Mutual Non-Disclosure Agreement on 9 October 2024 to explore combining Apogee's compliance expertise with OEC's artificial intelligence system to produce a disclosure-scanning tool for the banking sector.

According to the pleadings, OEC's team had limited knowledge of banking compliance disclosures at the outset, and Apogee thereafter supplied design frameworks, its disclosure style guide, samples of its database and its proprietary disclosure definitions. The claim states that the tool demonstrated less than 10 per cent accuracy in January 2025, and that accuracy rose from 50 to 90 per cent within 48 hours following incorporation of Apogee's materials in March 2025. Apogee alleges that OEC thereafter arranged demonstrations with prospective bank clients without its involvement, disputed any Apogee ownership in the resulting product, and allowed negotiations over a revenue-sharing structure to lapse. Correspondence from OEC in June 2025 stated that all Apogee information had been deleted and that no model had been trained on it, whilst ActiveTrust continued to market a compliance bot as its principal offering.

Claims advanced comprise violation of the Defend Trade Secrets Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1836 et seq., and breach of the non-disclosure agreement. The Plaintiff seeks permanent injunctive relief restraining commercial use and marketing of the tool, return of all materials relating to its trade secrets, compensatory and consequential damages on both counts, punitive and exemplary damages, costs and attorneys' fees, and interest.