Fresh off of announcing Google Wallet, Google has a new problem. A lawsuit. Paypal decided that they need to sue Google as well as two former employees [Warning: PDF] for violating contractual obligations and theft of trade secrets in the case of the two individuals, and it charges Google with interfering with PayPal’s contractual relations. Here’s what Paypal’s mouthpiece senior director of global communications Amanda Pires had to say via a blog entry:
We spend a lot of time and energy creating the things that make PayPal unique and a preferred way to pay for almost 100 million people around the world. We treat PayPal’s “secrets” seriously, and take it personally when someone else doesn’t. So we made a decision today. We filed a lawsuit against Google and two former colleagues who now work there, Osama Bedier and Stephanie Tilenius.
You can read the entire lawsuit for yourself, but here’s the highlights:
- Stephanie Tilenius gets hired by Google in June 2010 and became Google VP of commerce and payments. According to PayPal, she agrees not to
stealsolicit PayPal employees until March 2011 - PayPal then claims that Tilenius contacted Osama Bedier in July 2010 and tried to convince him to join Google. Bedier after meeting with top Google execs ultimately resigned from PayPal in January 2011.
Paypal then wants you to connect the dots when it comes to the rest. Both these individuals then supposedly used what they learned at PayPal to help create Google Wallet. Thus, faster than you can say “Charlie Sheen loves goddesses,” you have a lawsuit being filed by PayPal.
My only thought on this is as follows. How much of this is about PayPal being wronged, and how much is about PayPal potentially being put out to pasture by the titan known as Google? Sure the fact that the way the two individuals ended up at Google is a bit questionable at best. But everything past that can be argued six ways from Sunday.
As usual, expect this to take years and expect to have the lawyers coming out on top.