Gurumurthy Kalyanaram – Dean, Expert Witness and Former Professor NYIT and UT Dallas

Reports on Expert Witness Testimony in Litigation between Two Telecom Companies

Gurumurthy Kalyanaram - Former Dean and former NYIT and UT Dallas professor Gurumurthy Kalyanaram reports on his recent expert witness testimony in a lawsuit filed by a start-up telecom firm against a China-based telecom firm.

The background to the lawsuit is as follows.  A start-up telecom company based in US got a license in 2004 to operate in Liberia. The license was for the entire suite of telecom services.  As part of its launch preparation, the start-up explored a collaborative with a China-based telecom company to supply hardware.  The two telecom companies engaged in substantial conversation, and the both signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement.

However, by 2005 things started unravel. The China-based telecom company, ignoring the Non-Disclosure Agreement, directly approached the Liberian authorities and was able to persuade them to jettison the US-based start-up firm.

This started the dispute in 2005-2006.  Finally, the US based start-up firm (plaintiff) filed a lawsuit against the China-based telecom firm (defendant) in the State Court in Texas.  The complaint alleges breach of contract, fraud, tortious interference with prospective business relation, misappropriation of trade secrets, and civil theft.  The defendant moved for dismissal based on statute of limitations, but that was denied by the Court.  And the Court ordered arbitration of the dispute.

The arbitration proceedings took place in the month of July 2014.

As expert witness, I provided analytical and strategic insights to the plaintiff on a variety of critical issues relating to demand forecasting (Bass Model) and revenue estimation including computation of risk premium, first mover and entry-entry advantages and market share estimation, market liberalization and implications, financial institutions and lending, and the dynamics of telecom industry.  I not only worked with the plaintiff and estimated the over-all damages.

After preparation of the documents, I provided live testimony – direct and cross - on these issues.  After listening to the defendant’s arguments/testimony, I provided a rebuttal testimony.  My testimony was very well received by the Arbitrator.  The counsel for the plaintiff wrote to me: “You were a big hit. I spoke highly about you in my two and a half hour closing and there was NO criticism of you (from the defendant).  Thanks for everything.”

For the final closing written brief, I wrote a short memo offering insights on computation of market shares and revenues under different plausible scenarios.