A Broward circuit court judge has issued an order granting a motion to dismiss against a software company after the out-of-state defendant argued for the application of the corporate shield because he was never physically in Florida for an alleged intellectual property theft.

Judge Robert W. Lee of the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit of Florida on Monday granted the motion to dismiss against Chetu, a software consulting firm that uses Broward County as its base of operations. The motion, which was brought by Miami-based Diaz Reus on behalf of Mega Private Investigation and Zeev Haskal, was in response to the software company suing the California defendants for alleged use of plaintiff’s intellectual property without payment.