What happened in the 2010 election in the Philippines which cause Smartmatic to sue Dominion Voting systems?

Question

After listening to Sydney Powell on Lou Dobbs for the umpteenth time, I decided to do some fact checking of my own. She was talking about smartmatic, which is a company that makes election software, but not necessarily voting machines any more (I'm a little unclear on that, I looked at the breakdown per state on voting machines and Dominion appears to be #2, but smartmatic is not on the list, so I don't really know what they do). In any event, I stumbled upon a page that was deleted from their site, but still remains in Google search cache

"This lawsuit is necessary because of Dominion's persistent refusal to deliver technology that Smartmatic legally licensed," said David Melville, General Counsel of Smartmatic. "We intend to recover the costs of rectifying a basic Dominion software error that nearly affected the 2010 Philippine elections, which we went to great lengths and expense to correct in keeping with our commitment to maintain the highest standards of election integrity and transparency."

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PhaAzJr1e-UJ:https://www.smartmatic.com/media/article/smartmatic-international-sues-dominion-voting-systems-for-licensing-breach-and-improper-business-practices/+&cd=15&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

So what was the nature of the error in Dominion software in the 2010 Philippine election and how did Dominion and Smartmatic interoperate back then? Also, if anyone knows how this lawsuit ended, that would be interesting too, says it was filed in the Delaware Court of Chancery and this is the link to the court case, the proceedings are in lexisnexis.

Answer 1

I can find no specific information on an error in the 2010 Philippines election relating to Dominion voting systems (there's lots of comments about Smartmatic machines having problems, but without knowledge of which ones contained Dominion software it's pretty impossible to puzzle out). However, I would suggest that whatever that error was (assuming it existed), it did not cause Smartmatic to sue Dominion. There's a difference, very often, between the publicly avowed reasons for suit and those that are actually submitted to a court. So it appears here. Records are weirdly lacking, but in the one document I can find in the case:

The motion before me presents the narrow issue of whether the term ― "in the United States" - as used in an October 2009 license agreement, includes Puerto Rico. The license agreement grants the plaintiffs a worldwide (other than the United States and Canada) nonexclusive license to certain technology the defendants developed related to automated voting machines. The agreement‘s noncompetition provision prohibited the plaintiffs from selling the licensed products ―in the United States.‖ The plaintiffs attempted to sell such products in Puerto Rico. In response, the defendants purported to terminate the license agreement for breach of the noncompetition provision. The defendants also ceased performing their obligations under the agreement.This lawsuit followed.

In other words, Dominion sold Smartmatic a license to sell their software everywhere but North America, intending to keep that market entirely to themselves. Smartmatic sold it in Puerto Rico, a US territory. Dominion terminated the license agreement, since Smartmatic breached it, and Smartmatic sued them saying that Puerto Rico isn't "part of the United States".

The implication of that is that Smartmatic voting machines in the 2010 Phillipines election contained software that was licensed from Dominion, and so if that software was faulty in some way that could be what the company is referring to in their media statement. I would lean strongly towards the view however that this is a straightforward business dispute that Smartmatic is choosing to couch in terms that paint themselves in a positive light.

Also, if anyone knows how this lawsuit ended, that would be interesting too

I can't find any closing records, which is a bit annoying. I'm interested too; seems pretty clear to me that Puerto Rico is part of the United States.