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

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.