07 June 2023

RNS Reach

PCI-PAL PLC

("PCI Pal", "the Company" or "the Group")

Breach of confidentiality agreement by Sycurio Ltd

PCI-PAL PLC (AIM: PCIP), the global cloud provider of secure payment solutions for business communications, has today made the following press release in relation to its ongoing patent dispute with its competitor, Sycurio Limited ("Sycurio") (formerly Semafone Limited).

Press Release

On Friday 26 May 2023, Sycurio's US lawyers informed the Company that in April 2022 its client Sycurio breached the terms of confidentiality agreements that had been put in place between PCI Pal and Sycurio to protect information provided as part of the unfounded, ongoing patent litigation ("Confidentiality Agreements"). In its disclosure to PCI Pal, Sycurio's US lawyers confirmed that Sycurio had illegitimately shared confidential information with Sycurio personnel who were not covered by the Confidentiality Agreements.

Furthermore, Sycurio have acknowledged that a number of their personnel, including senior product staff and board members, both internal and external, were involved in a board meeting during which Sycurio considered competitor technology and call flows, and that PCI Pal's confidential information "may" have been used in this session. This session also involved personnel from Sycurio's private equity owners, Livingbridge LLP.

Background

As part of the ongoing patent litigation in the UK, PCI Pal was obliged to prepare an explanation of how its patented technology had been implemented across its customer base and provide explanations as to how the systems are configured. As is required, the information was shared with Sycurio under strict Confidentiality Agreements.

The PCI Pal Board is shocked that Sycurio, who are themselves a provider of data security solutions, should have such weak controls that a data breach such as this could have happened. Furthermore, the PCI Pal Board is surprised at the time it has taken for it to be discovered and reported. It has taken Sycurio over a year to inform PCI Pal of the breach, therefore the full extent of how this confidential information has been used by Sycurio since April 2022 is not yet known.

PCI Pal is consulting with its lawyers to establish the best way to ascertain the full extent of the information breach, which will require further disclosures from Sycurio, and how to deal with the legal implications of the breach, which may or may not lead to further legal action against Sycurio or other recipients of the information.

For further information, please contact:

About PCI Pal:

PCI Pal is a leading provider of Software-as-a-Service ("SaaS") solutions that empower companies to take payments from their customers securely, adhere to strict industry governance, and remove their business from the significant risks posed by non-compliance and data loss. Our products secure payments and data in any business communications environment including voice, chat, social, email, and contact centre. We are integrated to, and resold by, some of the worlds' leading business communications vendors, as well as major payment service providers.

The entirety of our product-base is available from our global cloud platform hosted in Amazon Web Services ("AWS"), with regional instances across EMEA, North America, and ANZ.

For more information visit www.pcipal.com or follow the team on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pci-pal/