Across four hearings between March 5 and May 14, 2026, the federal court in Ardent Labs, Inc. v. Applied Systems, Inc. found that Applied “likely did want to eliminate Comulate’s competitive threat,” that customers had “become dependent on Epic in a way that makes it difficult for them to switch,” that Applied may have an “inferior product,” and called Applied’s conduct “harsh.” More than twenty Comulate customers, many under stated fear of retaliation by Applied, submitted unanimous declarations that Applied’s coercion was the only reason they would leave Comulate. Despite that, the court declined to grant preliminary-stage relief in each instance.

Inside the Four Hearings

On March 5, the court found Comulate had shown “a likelihood of success on tortious interference” against Applied. The court ruled it was “open to an injunction that prevents Applied from cutting off Epic access after June,” but said it “need[ed] some more in order to be persuaded” that the harm to Comulate after the June cutoff would be “attributable to tortious interference as opposed to independent customer judgment.” The court ordered expedited discovery and invited Comulate to file a renewed motion when it was "ready". The court also ruled that Comulate’s use of a sandbox account to improve and test its Epic integration was “a different transaction” from the claims Comulate brought against Applied, that “[t]o bar Comulate from pursuing its claim would not be equitable,” and that “the conduct here is sufficiently distinct from the merits.”

On March 25, the court heard Comulate's motion to compel after Applied ignored six successive requests to acknowledge it used Slack internally, admitted only after the production deadline that it had collected no Slack messages at all, declined repeated meet-and-confer requests, and let its executives hand-select their own texts without counsel supervision. The court denied the motion, holding that “the key point in support of plaintiff’s preliminary injunction motion is from the customers’ perspective” and that Comulate was “equipped with appropriate information to advance the motion” based on the documents Applied produced.

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On April 21, the court, presented with more than twenty customer statements and dozens of documents produced by Applied, denied the renewed injunction motion. The court, on the preliminary record, decided Applied had “no duty, contractual or tort” to support Comulate and that Applied’s conduct reflected “harsh but authorized business practices.” The court also found evidence Applied’s decision “was motivated by a desire to eliminate a potential or existing competitive threat” and that Applied’s conduct “may be disruptive to existing locked-in contractual relationships.”

On May 14, hearing Comulate's motion to reconsider the April 21 decision, the court again acknowledged that Applied “likely did want to eliminate Comulate's competitive threat.” It nonetheless credited Applied's sandbox-account justification as “likely true” and therefore not likely pretextual, and attributed Comulate's harm to its own “misdeeds.” It also held that protecting “Applied, and perhaps the market generally” was “of greater social value than the stability of Comulate's contracts with its customers.” In March, the same court concluded it was “too harsh” to deny relief over the sandbox account and the public interest “not weighty either way.” Comulate’s position is that pretext turns on actual motivation rather than merely stated justification, and that the customers are the “market.” That more than twenty mutual customers submitted statements to the court unanimously supporting Comulate — compared to zero for Applied — reveals the market support for competition over Applied's monopoly and exclusionary practices presented as customer protection.

Applied published only the May 14 transcript, hiding from its customers the proceedings with adverse findings that expose Applied's “harsh” business practices, intent to eliminate Comulate, and sweeping contractual assertions that deny customers rights over their data and partners. The full transcripts are accessible here.

Applied’s Missing Contractual Basis

Pressed by Comulate and the court for any contractual provision authorizing selective cutoff of Comulate, Applied's counsel could not name one, and pivoted to a purported interest in protecting customers — the same customers who told the court they supported Comulate and feared Applied's retaliation. Applied's cutoff notices to customers identify no theory of breach, and customers who have asked Applied to name the provision they would be violating report that Applied has refused to answer.

Comulate contends Applied's customer contracts permit no selective withdrawal — only full termination, which Applied refuses because it would greatly expand its liability.

The court pointed to a third-party acknowledgment form as another possible basis for the cutoff. Comulate never signed that form, which Applied does not dispute, and Applied never required it as a condition of permitting Comulate as an Authorized Integration under dozens of customer agreements. Comulate contends the form is a core instrument of Applied's anticompetitive campaign, and that Applied now invokes it against an integration partner that never agreed to it.

Applied’s Monopoly and Pretextual Campaign

Per Comulate’s complaint, Applied leverages monopoly control over the infrastructure on which the insurance industry runs to suppress competition, raise prices, and stall innovation. It controls four chokepoints: Applied Epic, the enterprise AMS with 81%+ market share; the proprietary SDK through which third-party applications integrate with Epic; IVANS, the industry's once-neutral carrier-agency data exchange network on which competing AMSs depend; and ACN, the primary commercial channel for vendors selling to agencies, likewise originally independent. Applied gates each to restrict competition in adjacent markets it seeks to enter and to forestall competition to Epic itself.

Applied has used its monopoly infrastructure unlawfully against more than a dozen companies, with Comulate the latest victim, per the complaint. In February 2023, Applied’s SVP of Corporate Development Brian Giometti told Comulate that Applied was “more open to partnership” because building what Comulate had built would take “years” and that Comulate’s capabilities were not “anywhere remotely near on [Applied’s] roadmap.” A month later, Giometti asked Comulate to help solve the accounting problems of Applied’s largest and most strategic customer, calling Comulate a “value-add.” Over the next two years, Applied’s engineers sent nearly 600 emails to Comulate’s team and jointly resolved at least eighteen defects in Applied’s own software, and shared customers paid Applied thousands to tens of thousands of dollars annually for the services needed to integrate with Comulate. When Comulate declined Applied’s late-2023 acquisition overtures, Applied turned to building a competing product, Applied Recon, and began a sustained campaign to prevent Comulate from working with that strategic customer.

Throughout 2024 and 2025, Applied imposed escalating commercial friction against Comulate. It demanded Comulate sign draconian agreements giving Applied the purported right to revoke Comulate’s integration status at will and to claim Comulate’s IP if Applied “determine[d] that” Comulate was “a competitor.” It raised integration fees by up to 675%, layered in administrative delays, and withheld product improvements and fixes customers requested because they would have made Comulate work better with Epic. It also sent baseless cease-and-desist letters and banned Comulate from the segment’s largest trade group.

By May 2025, Applied’s President Graham Blackwell told Comulate’s CEO that because Comulate had refused to be acquired, Applied was imposing “friction that you guys are going to feel” on Comulate’s path, and foreshadowed cutting off Comulate’s access to the Epic SDK. In July 2025, Applied’s GM Chase Petrey made one final acquisition overture, acknowledging Comulate as the “category winner” and “dominant player” and telling Comulate that Applied planned to “do an acquisition in this space” in the coming months.

By August 2025, two months before Applied’s claimed discovery of the grounds for its lawsuit, mutual customers reported Applied was telling them Comulate “would only be available until the end of the year when something was going to happen which they wouldn’t really explain,” and that Comulate would soon be “out of business.” A former Applied VP, also told Comulate Applied was “acting scared” and that its leadership was “going to try to shut all access off.” The same source stated the directive came from Applied’s outgoing CEO Taylor Rhodes, who “specifically calls [Comulate] out in SMG meetings in some strong language” and told his senior leadership team: “There are AI startup companies . . . these people eat, sleep, breathe the problem they’re trying to solve . . . we can’t do that.” Two months later, an employee at Hellman & Friedman, Applied’s majority PE owner, reported that it and Applied were “very very scared of” Comulate and had placed it “#1 on their list of competition.”

By September 2025, Applied’s largest and most strategic customer was facing mounting issues with Applied’s accounting features, reported disastrous month-end closings, and informed Applied of its plans to engage Comulate. By October 2, Blackwell escalated his personal lobbying of the customer, saying Applied would not “enable greater integration with Comulate” and falsely telling the customer that Comulate lacked the scalability required to support the customer. The effort failed on October 16, when the customer told Applied it had chosen Comulate on the merits. The next day, Blackwell approved of a “shutoff directive” to cut off customers’ integration access to Comulate, without any mention of the claims Applied now keeps central to its suit. In the days that followed, Applied assembled the grounds for its lawsuit, coordinated its personnel to act against Comulate, and distributed an executive-level anti-Comulate policy with written instructions to conceal it from the targeted customer. After weeks of misleading the customer about progress toward the required statement of work, on November 21, 2025, Applied sued Comulate instead.

What Comes Next

Comulate continues to serve and support its customers without disruption as it continues to press its case. With the court declining to provide injunctive relief, only customers stand between Applied and its strategy of foreclosing competitors and customer lock-in. Customers across this market rely on third-party integrations Applied is now further emboldened to eliminate, as it has blocked Comulate very publicly and others quietly —including two other companies in the accounting automation category.

The next milestone will be the ruling on Applied’s motion to dismiss. That decision will reach the antitrust counts, which were not addressed at the preliminary stage, and clear the way for Comulate to take discovery from Applied and prove its claims on the merits.