Before LiberkeeThe record behind Huf's Phone as a Key

The NDA disclosure

How the system reached Huf

This is our account of the 2012 disclosure. It is supported by the NDA itself, the correspondence around it, and a police report. We hold these documents and will provide them to counsel, journalists and Huf’s or Sodecia’s advisers under appropriate terms.

The parties

On one side, the inventors: two people whose work since 2001 had been in identity, security and encryption, who had designed and validated the system between 2006 and 2011, and who held the design documents and software.

On the other, an intermediary presenting himself as an investment broker with a personal connection into Huf. His own background was in connected-car and consumer mobile software, not in identity or security, and he acknowledged as much at the time.

What was agreed

The intermediary proposed an investment in exchange for equity in the inventors’ existing business. An agreement in principle was reached, conditional on the investment being made. Under that arrangement the system was disclosed to him, and through him to Huf, under a non-disclosure agreement that prohibited any transfer or sale of the intellectual property.

What we say happened next

On our account, the intermediary entered a separate turnkey development contract with Huf under which the intellectual property would pass to Huf on delivery, without the inventors’ knowledge or consent, and without the equity or investment that had been agreed. A company was set up that was in substance dormant, with a single director, and shareholdings and directorships were represented to Huf that did not reflect who actually owned the work.

We reported this conduct to UK police as fraud and identity theft, and the matter was recorded as under investigation. We then wrote to Huf setting out what had happened: that the material in its hands was ours, that the affidavits of ownership it had received were false, and that the NDA barred any onward use.

Huf did not withdraw. In February 2015 it announced the technology as its own invention, and in November 2015 it launched Liberkee.

Our position. By the time it announced Phone as a Key, Huf was in documented receipt of our notice that the technology was ours and that the person who supplied it had no right to do so. Proceeding in that knowledge is the heart of this record.

Documents

The following are held and available on request. Items marked “to be added” will be published here in redacted form as the site is completed.