{"id":584418,"date":"2026-08-05T23:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T23:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/584418\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T23:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T23:14:10","slug":"student-laptop-firm-claiming-it-lost-contracts-with-20-schools-to-rivals-drops-injunction-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/584418\/","title":{"rendered":"Student laptop firm claiming it lost contracts with 20 schools to rivals drops injunction \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

An ed-tech company has agreed to drop a temporary injunction it obtained last week after it complained that it lost 20 schools and contracts worth \u20ac1.6 million after its former managers joined a rival company. <\/p>\n

In the High Court<\/a> last week, barristers for Olive, a trading name for Upskill Online Ltd, obtained wide-ranging orders that prohibited Eduvolve and related companies from marketing or providing any educational services to any school that worked with Olive. The order also restrained the defendants from disposing of some \u20ac15,000 worth of IT equipment under dispute. <\/p>\n

Judge David Nolan granted the interim injunction after reading the affidavit of Brendan Kavanagh, Olive\u2019s chief executive and founder, who complained that his former colleagues were unlawfully using Olive\u2019s confidential information to poach schools.<\/p>\n

The judge was satisfied there was a prima-facie case of \u201ccommercial sabotage\u201d.<\/p>\n

The injunction orders were granted up to August 5th against three executives who formerly worked for or with Olive \u2013 Ian Gaughran, Erik Jentetics and Fintan Costello \u2013 and three companies: PNS Ltd, trading as PC Peripherals; Grafton Digital Ltd; and Eduvolve Ltd. None of the defendants had an opportunity to address the court before the orders were made and all have since filed affidavits denying any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

In court on Wednesday, Judge Michael Twomey was told that the two sides had agreed that the interim injunction orders could be discharged. Gaughran, Jentetics and Costello were all in court with their legal teams. Kavanagh was not in court but his company was represented by barrister Jarlath Ryan.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0School tech supplier gets injunction over alleged \u2018commercial sabotage\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

An order was made by Twomey that noted denials from the defendants that said they had done nothing wrong. Gaughran, a former Microsoft executive who led Olive for Education until earlier this year, denied \u201cconducting any services\u201d that breached an agreement reached in March that settled an earlier case that Olive took against him and Jentetics. <\/p>\n

The agreed order restrained him from conducting any services that breached the March settlement agreement.<\/p>\n

The order also noted that Fintan Costello, a former Olive executive who is now head of Microsoft practice at PC Peripherals, denied extracting any information from Olive\u2019s systems.<\/p>\n

Kavanagh had accused Costello of hacking into Olive\u2019s systems since he left to access confidential commercial information. <\/p>\n

The order made on Wednesday required Costello to deliver a complete account of any information extracted from Olive\u2019s systems. <\/p>\n

Documents filed by Kavanagh show he believed Gaughran was working with Costello and Jentetics at Eduvolve in breach of a settlement that prohibited him from working in the education sector until August 2nd. <\/p>\n

While Olive had sued Gaughran in January for allegedly seeking to solicit Olive\u2019s customers for a new business, the terms of the settlement reached in March involved Olive paying Gaughran \u20ac61,713. Gaughran publicly withdrew allegations he made questioning Olive\u2019s financial viability as part of the settlement. <\/p>\n

In his affidavit, Kavanagh blamed Gaughran for Olive losing contracts for 20 schools with an annual value of \u20ac1.61 million which involved contracts for 2,690 individuals. Among the schools were Col\u00e1iste Br\u00edde, Clondalkin; Loreto College, Foxrock; Blackrock College; Col\u00e1iste Bhaile Chl\u00e1ir in Claregalway; and Presentation Secondary School, Kilkenny. Those contracts ranged in value from \u20ac107,000 to \u20ac191,000.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have been advised by certain officers in those schools that approaches have been made by Mr Gaughran to those schools, suggesting that they would switch to PC Peripherals,\u201d Kavanagh said. <\/p>\n

Both Olive and Gaughran have accused the other side of breaching their settlement agreement, including its non-disparagement terms. Olive\u2019s solicitor complained that Gaughran had publicly \u201cliked\u201d and \u201cthereby endorsed negative commentary about Mr Kavanagh\u2019s late daughter\u2019s charity on LinkedIn and Twitter\/X.<\/p>\n

\u201cClearly this amounts to disparagement and was intended to be inflammatory by Mr Gaughran,\u201d the legal letter sent on March 14th said.<\/p>\n

Included in the filings is a copy of Fintan Costello\u2019s resignation email sent to Kavanagh last January.<\/p>\n

In his email, Costello said he was \u201cappalled at the actions of the company with its continuous misrepresentations and non-payment to suppliers\u201d. He said he was \u201cparticularly appalled by the actions taken this past week in Claregalway College\u201d, one of the schools that has since left Olive\u2019s school scheme.<\/p>\n

Twomey adjourned the case until October 5th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An ed-tech company has agreed to drop a temporary injunction it obtained last week after it complained that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,73,61,60],"class_list":["post-584418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-high-court","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}