N2N GLOBAL SOLUTIONS Sdn Bhd

On the court record

Illustrates the collective character of trade-secrets litigation pursued by a corporate group, where affiliated companies join as co-plaintiffs to protect information held in common.

N2N Global Solutions Sdn Bhd appears in the reported judgments as a member of a technology corporate group prosecuting a trade-secrets and employment dispute alongside its affiliated companies, with matters in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan). It stands among the plaintiffs and applicants in proceedings directed at former personnel and rival entities said to have misused the group's confidential information.

The group's substantive case, as put before the Court of Appeal, was built on copyright infringement, breach of confidence, the misuse of confidential information and trade secrets, breach of employment contracts and the duties of fidelity, fiduciary duty and trust, conspiracy and dishonest assistance, unlawful interference with trade, and conversion. Those causes of action, pursued together, are the recognised means by which a business seeks to protect proprietary material said to have been taken by departing employees to a competitor, and the company's inclusion among the plaintiffs reflects its stake in the group's shared confidential assets.

The procedural history is dominated by two contests. The first concerned a notice to produce documents, in which the court weighed whether it had jurisdiction to set the notice aside, whether the notice amounted to an abuse of process, and whether it circumvented the completed discovery process and a document-classification framework, engaging sections 65 and 66 of the Evidence Act 1950 and Orders 34 and 92 of the Rules of Court 2012. The second arose from a mediation before a judicial commissioner: broad settlement terms were recorded, but where the parties could not agree the draft consent judgment, the court reviewed the audio-video recording of the mediation to determine which version had been agreed, and the sealed consent judgment was then attacked on grounds going beyond the usual fraud, mistake or total failure of consideration. Across the decisions, the company illustrates the collective character of trade-secrets litigation pursued by a corporate group, in which affiliated companies join as co-plaintiffs to protect information held in common.