Savor, a marketing firm based in Plymouth, Michigan, has filed a suit for theft of trade secrets against Fidelity Investments and Upromise in Delaware state court.

The suit raises questions in the financial services industry about how firms can protect themselves from such litigation as business plans featuring cookie-cutter concepts fly from office to office seeking backers and strategic partners.

The details of the case might sound eerily familiar. Savor founder and CEO Dennis Doyle alleges that Fidelity breached a confidentiality agrement after seeing details of Savor's 1998 college savings fund plan. Meanwhile, Upromise, an early millennium start-up, has presented a similar program to Fidelity. Both Upromise and Savor have patents pending.

Among other coincidences, Doyle cites Upromise's hiring of VP Jim Fadule, who once worked in Fidelity's college program department. Furthermore, the very name of the Boston-based business is styled after U.Plan and U.Fund, Fidelity's Massachusetts college savings programs.

"The case has no merit whatsoever," said Neal Winneg, Upromise's corporate counsel. "They're trying to hold us up." He added that the company has heard from a dozen people working on ideas along the same vein.

Fidelity representative Jessica Catino, reluctant to comment on the legal proceeding, said, "We are confident that we have done nothing wrong in considering a proposal." The companies have no contract to date.

One solution to this legal problem may be for fund companies to take a page from venture capital firms. Those firms rarely sign confidentiality agreements since they frequently are pitched multiple versions of the same concept. 

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