A small vendor is suing Pennymac for stealing its technology, in a case the litigant compared to the larger competitor's previous spat with Black Knight.
Surge, a customer relationship management vendor which claims to work with large wholesale lenders, sued
"Pennymac's theft is no accident but a deliberate attempt to convert Surge's software, terminate its relationship with Surge, and continue to use that software without reimbursing Surge," wrote attorneys for the company.
The vendor asked the court for an injunction to stop Pennymac from using its data, and for unspecified damages to be tripled upon a ruling.
The lawsuit says Pennymac's behavior is reminiscent of its alleged
An attorney for Surge declined to comment beyond the contents of the complaint, while a spokesperson for Pennymac declined to comment on pending litigation.
The dispute
Surge says its platform combines broker compliance, onboarding, market intelligence and CRM into a single system, and that its customers include some of the nation's top-25 wholesale lenders.
The vendor signed a contract with Pennymac in February 2021 for the multichannel player to use its Partner360 cloud-based operating system, according to the complaint. Despite agreeing not to reverse engineer the software, Surge claims Pennymac did so, copying data from the vendor's system into its cloned version.
Although the lender terminated their relationship, Pennymac allegedly improperly shared Surge access credentials with other unspecified users, and continues to use its licenses. The suit claims Pennymac also dismissed Surge's concerns last year when an attorney for the vendor reached out.
"PennyMac's counsel took the position that Surge's counsel's letter was 'not well received' and that '[t]his dispute is about billing and nothing more, and it will be treated as such,'" the complaint said.
A summons was issued to Pennymac this week.
In 2019,
