Trayport Limited v E-Star Trading GmbH & Ors

Trayport Limited, the dominant platform for energy trading in the European wholesale energy markets, advanced eleven distinct claims against one of its competitors - E-Star Trading GmbH (formerly Exxeta AG) - and its managing directors.

The claims embraced claims of copyright, database and trademark infringement, breach of confidence, breach of restrictive covenants/non-competes, breach of contract, economic torts, unlawful means conspiracy and vicarious liability. Permission to serve all claims out of the jurisdiction was set aside for want of merit and/or serious and material breaches of the duty of full and frank disclosure. The Court re-granted a limited permission to serve a small minority of the claims out of the jurisdiction, on terms that the Claimant pay the costs of the applications on the indemnity basis.

After the Claimant’s abandonment of the unlawful means conspiracy claim during the contested set-aside applications, the Court proceeded to find in its reserved judgment that Trayport did not have a real prospect of success on seven of its eleven claims and that looked at in the round the forum conveniens was Germany not England. The judge also found that the Claimant had materially breached its duty of full and frank disclosure on its ex parte application for permission to serve out, including by failing to identify to the Court the long-standing relationship between the parties and incidents of the same, by failing to draw matters identified by the Defendants' solicitors in pre-action correspondence to the Court’s attention and by misstating the applicable law of a key contract.

Tom Mountford and Grant Kynaston acted for the successful First and Second Defendants.

Daniel Burgess acted for the successful Third Defendant.

The judgment can be found here.