Case No. IP-2019-000175

37.Mr Padalino accepts that before Mr D’Aguanno started working for DPA, DPA’s CGI work was generally sent out of house to a company in Italy called Comoglio Architetti (“Comoglio”). Mr D’Aguanno says that was because there was nobody internally who could do that specialised work, and also because DPA itself did not have the computing requirements needed to carry out the work. There is some dispute on the former point which I do not need to resolve - Mr Padalino in cross-examination said that they had previously had a member of staff who had carried out such work, who had left – but little dispute on the latter. Mr Padalino stated that DPA found it more cost-effective to send the work out, rather than buy software and train staff to use it. He described CGI software as expensive. Of course, 3D AutoCAD has CGI capability, and this perhaps provides additional support for my finding that DPA did not license 3D AutoCAD for staff use at the time Mr D’Aguanno was working there. In any event, Mr Padalino accepted in cross-examination that this was an unconventional approach to CGI work for a long-established architectural practice employing about 14 staff members working on a variety of projects large and small. He said that DPA had worked this way for the previous 20 years or more. 38.There is a little dispute about timing (upon which nothing turns), but it is common ground that once Mr D’Aguanno was working regularly at DPA, he took over the CGI work as he had both the skills to do so and a laptop with sufficient necessary software and computing power to do it.