HP is seeking damages of around $5 billion from Lynch and his former colleague Sushovan Hussain, alleging that they inflated the value of Autonomy before selling the big data firm, whose software searches and organises unstructured information, such as telephone conversations. Autonomy was supposed to be the centrepiece of a plan to transform HP from a PC and printer maker into a software-focused enterprise services firm, a shift successfully undertaken by IBM in the previous two decades.