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The lawsuit filed in State District Judge Dan Hinde's civil court is brought by two contractors who were hired by METRO to design a more accurate safety monitoring system for light rail.

"They were hired by METRO, initially, to design a system that would basically monitor the light rail drivers and the cars themselves."

Attorney Jason Gibson represents the contractors and says the GPS based system helped METRO track when light rail drivers were making mistakes.

"METRO then promised and agreed to use this system on the expansion project for the light rail. And that's where we have the issue. Now they're being shunned out of the bidding process, they were not allowed to participate, the city's hijacked their technology, their trade secrets — and they're attempting to use it to get bids from these other companies."

The temporary restraining order prevents METRO from disseminating any software or hardware designs for the system or sharing specs with other companies.

 METRO Spokesman Jerome Gray says he can't comment on pending litigation, but did issue a statement saying the allegations are unfounded and the transit agency looks forward to presenting the facts at the temporary injunction hearing on October 12th.