From: Courthouse News Service
By PHILIP A. JANQUART
BOISE, Idaho (CN) – An energy company employee used sensitive information to develop a competing product that could jeopardize the security of the nation’s power grid, Battelle Energy Alliance claims in court.
Battelle sued Corey Thuen and his company, Southfork Security, in Federal Court.
It claims Thuen violated copyright by using its proprietary information to develop competing software that undermines two years of research and development and threatens to leave the nation’s power grid vulnerable to cyber-hackers and other threats.
“This is a case of a copyright infringement and violations of federal and state laws,” the complaint states. “Defendants have intentionally duplicated Battelle’s valuable copyrighted and trade secret software and have adopted and used that software in blatant disregard of Battelle’s intellectual property rights. …
“BEA’s copyrighted software is called Sophia and protects the United States’ energy infrastructure by alerting utility administrators of potential hackers or other threats to the integrity of the nation’s energy grid.
“Given the nature of Sophia, defendants’ actions have implications for our national security. Defendants know of these implications but have ignored them.”
Battelle Energy
Battelle Energy Alliance is a subsidiary of the Battelle Memorial Institute, according to publicly available information. The Institute calls itself “the world’s largest nonprofit research and development organization, with over 22,000 employees at more than 130 locations globally,” on its Internet home page.
Idaho Falls-based Battelle Energy Alliance was incorporated in 2004, and conducts nuclear energy research and development at the Idaho Nuclear Laboratory (INL). It recently has been tasked with developing software to protect the power grid.
The federal government has relied on tracking patterns of previous attacks to spot suspicious activity. That method has become obsolete as hackers employ new and evolving tactics.
Battelle received funding in 2009 from the Department of Energy, Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability to develop software to enhance the security of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, which control and monitor power grid systems.
Five Battelle employees, including Thuen, developed closed-source software they named “Sophia,” describing it as an Industrial Control System Computer Networking Fingerprinting Tool. The project was developed between 2010 and 2012 at a cost of approximately $1.5 million, according to the complaint.
Southfork Security
Thuen formed Southfork Security Inc. to compete with seven other third-party bidders vying for the contract to act as Sophia’s vendor, which would market and sell the product. He withdrew from the bidding process when he learned he would have to share royalties and licensing fees with Battelle, according to the complaint.
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