Google Sued for $1B Over Outlook Migration Tool

A two-count lawsuit filed by Chicago company LimitNone alleges that Google misappropriated trade secrets and violated Illinois' consumer fraud laws when it developed "Google Email Uploader" which competes with LimitNone's "gMove" application. "Google claims its core philosophy is 'Don't be evil' but, simply put, they invited us to work with them, to trust them — and then stole our technology,'" said Ray Glassman, CEO of LimitNone, in a prepared statement. The lawsuit was filed by Kelley Drye & Warren LLP, the same commercial litigation group which challenged Google over the company's online advertising system.

Comments

Talk about a knee jerk reaction...

[dreamchaser]

If even half of their claims are founded in truth then this is a worthy lawsuit and Google acted in an 'evil' manner. I'll clue you in on something: not all lawsuits are bad. The mechanism exists for a reason.

Then again at least you admitted that you are totally uninformed on the subject since you didn't read the (short) article.

Re:Talk about a knee jerk reaction...

[tgd]

You do realize you didn't read an article either, right?

Its a press-release. By the lawyers. Who are filing the lawsuit. How much of that $1B do you think they'll keep?

Re:Get Rich

[eebra82]

If you can't get rich by making a worthy product, then get rich by suing someone. (No, I didn't read the article, but we all know this is the new way of business for most companies - sue their way to wealth.) If you developed and spent money on a product that you felt was stolen, wouldn't you seek compensation for that loss? I'm not saying the $1B figure is reasonable, but regardless, if Google did what the accuser says, then at least they must make a fight for it.

Obviously, the product is interesting if Google supposedly wanted to steal it.

LimitNone = :'(

[introspekt.i]

I find it rather ridiculous that LimitNone actually believes that an Email client migration product is such an advanced piece of software that Google with its legions of developers and mounds of cash couldn't cook one up on its own. The article cites that LimitNone claims that the 'gMove' application was a trade secret..it wasn't even patented. This is another huge whiner case. This company has a product that has a snowball's chance in hell of competing with a 'free' Google product, yet they still expect that they are somehow entitled to money for it because Google went back on its word (not contractually..just its "word").

I was sitting in on a product development meeting a few months back and the discussion came up on how to be viable in today's market. One of the big questions in online application entrepeneuring is: How can we remain viable against companies like Google?.. Companies like Google that can cook up the same product with all the same features in a fraction of the time. It seems that if LimitNone had applied some common sense to its product lines, it wouldn't run into the problem of oh, say, Google extending the functionality of one of its already existing applications. Whoops.

Trade secrets? What trade secrets? Google can't write a migration suite for its own email service? Geeze.

This is ust another case of litigation over innovation. I mean, I'm no IP law expert or anything, but a client migration tool? This could have easily have been some kind of open source project..who would LimitNone have sued then?

Re:Get Rich

[devnullkac]

Sleazy? Maybe. That depends on the he-said she-said details of the "I promise I won't" allegations. The only thing that matters is in the third to last paragraph of the press release:

"Google Email Uploader" steals gMove's look, feel and functionality

Microsoft proved you can't steal look and feel (from Apple, anyway). Stealing functionality sounds like reverse engineering to me.

I think it comes down to a quote from Richard Marx:

It don't mean nothing, the words that they say ... It don't mean nothing till you sign it on the dotted line.