Judge Awards Applied Systems Preliminary Injunction Against Comulate

Applied Systems has been awarded a preliminary injunction against competitor Comulate, who Applied has accused of making a fake insurance agency to access its software platform and steal trade secrets.

The competitors in the insurance technology market have traded litigation, but on Feb. 11 a federal judge in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois said Applied “is likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief.”

Within a week from the order, Comulate must stop using any information obtained by its access to Applied’s insurance agency management software, Epic. Comulate must also stop selling any products developed, tested, or trained using Applied’s information to new customers, according to the court.

Last November, Applied Systems sued Comulate on allegations that Comulate misappropriated trade secrets. According to the latest court documents, Ardent Labs, doing business as Comulate, developed a software that “integrates” with Epic. In order to develop its product, Comulate created a fake insurance agency, “PBC,” to use Epic. However, in October 2025 Applied noticed activity from PBC that was out of the ordinary—”abnormally large” usage.

In a memorandum to explain details of the case, the judge said Comulate does not dispute creating the fake insurance agency, but called it a “sandbox” account used to demonstrate the functionality of its artificial intelligence-powered platform integration with Epic.

Comulate said it will comply with the court’s order, but it does not apply to existing customers.

Earlier this year, Comulate filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against Applied in the same venue. Comulate seeks to, in its words, “halt an entrenched monopolist’s unlawful campaign to destroy a competitor it could not acquire or outcompete.” In a Feb. 12 statement, Comulate said it too has a preliminary injunction request pending against Applied. The company said, “Applied has not identified a single Comulate product feature that incorporates any Applied trade secret.”

In granting the preliminary injunction, the judge said Comulate likely violated its contract with Applied by using its fake agency to conduct product demonstrations and to improve the integration with the Epic platform. In addition, Comulate was found to have provided access to Epic by unauthorized users.

The judge said Applied did not show a breach of contract when it came to violation of reverse-engineering clauses in the contract. Also, Applied “has not shown that Comulate created a derivative work from its software.” However, Applied was harmed, the judge concluded, because it spent money to investigate Comulate’s actions and lost at least one customer to Comulate.

“If there was no preliminary injunction, Comulate could continue to seek out and contract with customers using information it is not entitled to exploit,” the judge said.