|
In September, the video game business website Gamasutra reported that at least a dozen executives had left Zynga since the company filed a “weaker-than-expected” second quarter earnings report on July 25, 2012. On October 15, 2012, Gamasutra reported that social game company Zynga filed a lawsuit against a former developer, alleging theft of trade secrets. Zynga claims that the former general manager for CityVille, Alan Patmore, copied over 700 files “containing trade secrets and sensitive business data from his company-issued laptop to a Dropbox online storage account” in the days leading up to his resignation. According to Gamasutra, the files included “metrics data, information on historic and future monetization plans, a final game design document for an unreleased Zynga game, over 10 unreleased design documents, company revenue information,” as well as 14 months of confidential internal emails. Patmore allegedly deleted the Dropbox program from his computer to cover his tracks. Patmore joined rival developer Kixeye as Product Vice President after 16 months of work for Zynga. The technology news website All Things Digital noted, “Kixeye is a much smaller Facebook games developer that has been extremely brazen about recruiting talent away from Zynga.” A Kixeye spokesperson told All Things Digital that the developer has nothing to do with the Zynga lawsuit. “Unfortunately, this appears to be Zynga’s new employee retention strategy: Suing former employees to scare current employees into staying,” the spokesperson said. “They’ve clearly exhausted other options in their employee retention playbook.” All Things Digital also noted Zynga filed a similar lawsuit three years ago, alleging that four former employees stole trade secrets and used that information against the company after joining Disney’s Playdom. The two companies later settled, although the terms of the settlement were not disclosed. Robert G. Klein Klein Trial Lawyers
Related Articles -
trade secrets, zynga, cityville, kixeye, disney, playdom, facebook, dropbox,
|
