Trade Secret Lawyer Alert: PayPal Sues Google for Trade Secret Theft

Because we live in the information age, intellectual property has become a critical corporate asset.  Most companies fail to adequately protect their trade secrets.  There are so many ways trade secret theft can occur.  The most obvious and popular one is to simply steal employees who are aware of and have intimate knowledge of the trade secrets.

PayPal is suing Google for trade secret theft, alleging that it stole employees with knowledge of their trade secrets related to mobile payment technology.  This trade secret theft lawsuit was filed the very same day that Google released its new mobile payment system, Google Wallet.  One former PayPal employee actually oversaw new product development of mobile technologies before switching to a nearly identical position at Google.  While at PayPal, this employee was actually in charge of negotiating a deal with Google.  PayPal claims that the employee was, at the same time, negotiating with Google for employment. As so often happens, a digital trail links the former PayPal employee to Google even while still employed to PayPal.  There are allegations that this employee actually transferred trade secrets from the PayPal Network onto his private computer just days before leaving the company.

The moral to the story here is clear.  Employees who steal trade secrets almost always get caught.  A good computer forensics person can trace the pre-departure activities, including the copying or transferring of files which ultimately end up on the defendant’s computers. 

At Traverse Legal, we are handling some of the largest software trade secret theft cases in the country.  We know how to win these complex litigation cases, which experts to hire in order to buttress our client’s position and what the case law requires from both the plaintiff’s and the defendant’s point of view.