
Jawbone Accuses Fitbit of Stealing Information by Hiring Workers Away - bontoJR
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/28/business/dealbook/jawbone-sues-fitbit-over-data-plundering-by-ex-employees.html
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CPLX
> One now-former employee, Ana Rosario, was hired by Fitbit as a user
> experience researcher around April 16 but did not disclose that she planned
> to leave Jawbone until April 22, the complaint said. On April 20, according
> to the complaint, Ms. Rosario held a meeting with Jawbone’s senior director
> of product management to discuss the company’s future plans and then
> downloaded what the company said was a “playbook” outlining its future
> products.

One could see how this sort of thing might have crossed a line. Perhaps Fitbit
had no idea this was going on, or perhaps they hired people and implicitly or
explicitly had them go in and get specific documents and information before
leaving.

One of the things about civil litigation is that sort of thing can be revealed
in discovery, via looking at internal emails, memos, and so on.

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sokoloff
So Fitbit targeted Jawbone as a source of engineering and product development
talent. That seems like fair play to me and anything less would seem oddly
uncompetitive.

Some of those ex-employees broke the confidence and policies of Jawbone while
employed there. That's the issue; Jawbone needs to address that with the
individuals.

If they want an injunction preventing Fitbit from using the literal documents
in question, or the specific confidential information about product roadmaps
in the employees' heads, that seems appropriate, but it's unclear how you'd
enforce it.

Fitbit is going to develop features in their hardware and software that
compete in the market. Inevitably, some of those same features will have been
on Jawbone's roadmap. The fact they get developed isn't proof to me that it
was stolen.

~~~
bontoJR
> _Some of those ex-employees broke the confidence and policies of Jawbone
> while employed there. That 's the issue; Jawbone needs to address that with
> the individuals._

Whats the potential outcome of this? I am not an expert about this kind of
things in the US, but in Europe this would mean an invalidation (if any
violation is proved) of the job contract. So the guy basically loses the job
pretty much immediately and gets probably fined.

~~~
sokoloff
Loses which job? The one they already left? That seems reasonable, but
irrelevant/pyrrhic for Jawbone's purposes.

~~~
alistairSH
I read it as the new job - a court injunction forces FitBit to fire the
employees who stole trade secrets from Jawbone.

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dctoedt
1\. The "optics" in this type of situation can be terrible; that can matter a
lot in court. Non-technical judges and/or jurors won't understand the
engineering details. They _will_ understand it when the former employer's
lawyer says, "Ladies and gentlemen, we will show that _[the former employee]_
is a liar, a sneak, and a thief."

2\. It's not at all unheard of for lawsuits to come out of the woodwork as an
IPO approaches. And surely these lawsuits are all brought from the purest of
motives; certainly no right-thinking company would _ever_ try to
_intentionally_ disrupt its competitor's IPO, right?

3\. Flashback: In the early 1990s, Computer Associates successfully sued a
small company, Altai, for misappropriation of trade secrets. An Altai
executive, who was a CA alumnus, recruited a CA product manager to work on an
Altai product that competed with a CA product.

Unbeknownst to Altai, the former CA product manager brought CA code with him
when he moved over. Altai had to rip out and replace the code and pay $364,000
in damages for infringement. (This was also a major scope-of-copyright-
protection case concerning the replacement code.) [1] [2]

The dispute cost Altai a lot of money and, perhaps more importantly, time and
reputation capital.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Associates_Internation...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Associates_International,_Inc._v._Altai_Inc).

[2]
[https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=639604498871411...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6396044988714111318)
\-- see especially the part with the heading _Dramatis personae_.

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NoMoreNicksLeft
I feel like in these cases where one startup sues a rival for stealing trade
secrets that it means neither has anything worth stealing.

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solve
It's as if the CA anti-solicitation scandal never happened. Let's increase the
fines for companies who are trying to own their employees by 100x.

~~~
imaginenore
Yeah, but nothing really happened in CA. The colluding companies saved $3
billion and paid a settlement of $415 million.

~~~
mauricemir
Puts the FIFA scandal in perspective eh

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benihana
What a shit headline. This isn't about stealing talent, it's about stealing
property. The whole issue is here:

"hiring Jawbone employees who _improperly downloaded sensitive materials_
shortly before leaving."

"During her exit interviews, Ms. Rosario initially denied taking confidential
information, but she later acknowledged downloading its “Market Trends &
Opportunities” presentation, the complaint said."

Go after the individual employees for stealing from you, not fitbit for hiring
them.

~~~
jdavis703
First off what's a download? If I do a "git pull" on my last day of the job,
simply in the course of my duties, could I be accused of stealing from the
company?

~~~
droopyEyelids
If Jawbone is a typical large company, they do DPI on all their employees
Internet traffic and have DLP software monitoring what files are moved to what
directories/removable media on employees equipment.

I think it's safe to assume that if they're pursuing this kind of lawsuit,
they have realistic evidence.

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dang
Url changed from [http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/27/jawbone-sues-fitbit-for-
st...](http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/27/jawbone-sues-fitbit-for-stealing-its-
talent-and-trade-secrets/), which points to this.

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erikb
Is it legal in some countries to leave your job for the competition? I thought
that's commonly outlawed in most countries.

Stealing planning documents is another thing but I am quite surprised that
it's okay to leave your company and work for the competition two days later.

~~~
mattmanser
Outlawed? No, and never, ever has been.

What a lot of companies attempt to do is put in anti-compete clauses in to the
_civil_ employment contract.

They are often unenforceable or if they are they are heavily time limited
unless a large financial incentive is provided to balance the loss of
earnings.

~~~
erikb
Would you edit in which country you're referring, too?

~~~
mattmanser
I'm from the UK, but it's the same for most countries. Moving companies in the
same field is not illegal, it's called a career.

