Mike Lynch just won a dramatic 12-year legal battle over his tech company. Weeks later, he and his top lawyer were dead. [Video]

In 2011, Mike Lynch was the toast of the tech world.

Hailed as Britain’s Bill Gates, Lynch sold Autonomy, his groundbreaking data management company, to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion.

Shareholders and business commentators were puzzled about what HP, a hardware company, would do with Autonomy, a software company — and why it was worth $11 billion. HP’s executives said at the time that Autonomy had the potential to transform HP and usher the Silicon Valley titan into a new generation.

None of that happened. A year after the acquisition, HP wrote down $8.8 billion of the purchase value and accused Lynch of lying about Autonomy’s finances.

The claim led to a vicious decadelong series of legal disputes.

Another Autonomy executive, Sushovan Hussain, was convicted of fraud in 2018 and sentenced to five years in prison. Federal prosecutors brought criminal charges against Lynch and Stephen Chamberlain, the former vice president of finance.

Lynch’s court battles concluded with a 3-month criminal trial in …