6 ms·

Jawbone Accuses Fitbit of Stealing Information by Hiring Workers Away

55 points by bontoJR 11y ago

dang 11y ago
Url changed from http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/27/jawbone-sues-fitbit-for-stealing-its-talent-and-trade-secrets/ http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/27/jawbone-sues-fitbit-for-st..., which points to this.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
solve 11y ago
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 11y ago
  Yeah, but nothing really happened in CA. The colluding companies saved $3 billion and paid a settlement of $415 million.
  - mauricemir 11y ago
    Puts the FIFA scandal in perspective eh
sokoloff 11y ago
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 11y ago
  > 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 11y ago
    Loses which job? The one they already left? That seems reasonable, but irrelevant/pyrrhic for Jawbone's purposes.
    - alistairSH 11y ago
      I read it as the new job - a court injunction forces FitBit to fire the employees who stole trade secrets from Jawbone.
  - relet 11y ago
    I doubt that there is any clause in your work contract that prevents you from using knowledge gained from the competition. There usually are clauses against carrying knowledge out of the company, but not the other way around.
  - mauricemir 11y ago
    Not heard of that in europe an employee might get thrown under the bus and sacked for gross misconduct if it came out. But its very common for sales types to take their contact list with them and I know one large UK employment Site had some one leave who took the entire candidate list with them.
- juliangregorian 11y ago
  > So Fitbit targeted Jawbone as a source of engineering and product development talent. No, I don't think that's a fair assessment at all. They specifically targeted their competitor's employees in order to get intel on their roadmap.
CPLX 11y ago
> 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.
erikb 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.
  - MrDosu 11y ago
    Exactly this, non competes are mostly only binding if there is adquate compensation involved. If your contract only says "Not allowed to work in the field for X month after leaving" and there is no compensation, it's toilet paper.
  - erikb 11y ago
    Would you edit in which country you're referring, too?
    - mattmanser 11y ago
      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.
- mauricemir 11y ago
  Which counties would this be Qatar? BTW Freedom to work for whoever you chose is on one the rights laid down in the Universal Declaration of Human rights. and I think its implied in the US constitution
  - erikb 11y ago
benihana 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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.
  - JonFish85 11y ago
    If you do a "git pull" on a repo that you don't normally work in, or after you've been told not to work on anymore, that might send up some signal flares. If it's as part of your normal work, I'm sure it's fine.
  - thisone 11y ago
    If you pull and then move those files to your own media and to top it off use that code in your new job, there's a problem. I've known people who've done it and I've had to clean up after them when it came to light where the code for certain modules came from. It sucks.
- Dublum 11y ago
  reading between the lines, it seems like they may have cause to believe fitbit induced the employees to grab that information before leaving. If that's the case then the case against fitbit makes more sense
dctoedt 11y ago
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_International,_Inc._v._Altai_Inc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Associates_Internation.... [2] https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6396044988714111318 https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=639604498871411... -- see especially the part with the heading Dramatis personae.
NoMoreNicksLeft 11y ago
I feel like in these cases where one startup sues a rival for stealing trade secrets that it means neither has anything worth stealing.

55 points by bontoJR 11y ago

dang 11y ago

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

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

solve 11y ago

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 11y ago
Yeah, but nothing really happened in CA. The colluding companies saved $3 billion and paid a settlement of $415 million.
- mauricemir 11y ago
  Puts the FIFA scandal in perspective eh

sokoloff 11y ago

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 11y ago
> 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 11y ago
  Loses which job? The one they already left? That seems reasonable, but irrelevant/pyrrhic for Jawbone's purposes.
  - alistairSH 11y ago
    I read it as the new job - a court injunction forces FitBit to fire the employees who stole trade secrets from Jawbone.
- relet 11y ago
  I doubt that there is any clause in your work contract that prevents you from using knowledge gained from the competition. There usually are clauses against carrying knowledge out of the company, but not the other way around.
- mauricemir 11y ago
  Not heard of that in europe an employee might get thrown under the bus and sacked for gross misconduct if it came out. But its very common for sales types to take their contact list with them and I know one large UK employment Site had some one leave who took the entire candidate list with them.
juliangregorian 11y ago
> So Fitbit targeted Jawbone as a source of engineering and product development talent. No, I don't think that's a fair assessment at all. They specifically targeted their competitor's employees in order to get intel on their roadmap.

CPLX 11y ago

> 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.

erikb 11y ago

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 11y ago
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.
- MrDosu 11y ago
  Exactly this, non competes are mostly only binding if there is adquate compensation involved. If your contract only says "Not allowed to work in the field for X month after leaving" and there is no compensation, it's toilet paper.
- erikb 11y ago
  Would you edit in which country you're referring, too?
  - mattmanser 11y ago
    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.
mauricemir 11y ago
Which counties would this be Qatar? BTW Freedom to work for whoever you chose is on one the rights laid down in the Universal Declaration of Human rights. and I think its implied in the US constitution
- erikb 11y ago

benihana 11y ago

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 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.
- JonFish85 11y ago
  If you do a "git pull" on a repo that you don't normally work in, or after you've been told not to work on anymore, that might send up some signal flares. If it's as part of your normal work, I'm sure it's fine.
- thisone 11y ago
  If you pull and then move those files to your own media and to top it off use that code in your new job, there's a problem. I've known people who've done it and I've had to clean up after them when it came to light where the code for certain modules came from. It sucks.
Dublum 11y ago
reading between the lines, it seems like they may have cause to believe fitbit induced the employees to grab that information before leaving. If that's the case then the case against fitbit makes more sense

dctoedt 11y ago

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_International,_Inc._v._Altai_Inc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Associates_Internation.... [2] https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6396044988714111318 https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=639604498871411... -- see especially the part with the heading Dramatis personae.

NoMoreNicksLeft 11y ago

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