Amazon Sues After Ex-Worker Takes Google Job

vortex2.71 (802986) writes Amazon is suing a former employee of its cloud services division after he took a similar position at Google. The interesting aspect of the lawsuit is that Google is choosing to vigorously defend the lawsuit, so this is a case of Goliath vs. Goliath rather than David vs. Goliath. According to court documents, Zoltan Szabadi left a business-development position at Amazon Web Services for Google's Cloud Platform division. Szabadi's lawyer responded by contending that, while Szabadi did sign a non-compete agreement, he would only use his general knowledge and skills at Google and would not use any confidential information he had access to at Amazon. He also believes Amazon's confidentiality and non-compete agreements are an unlawful business practice.

Comments

Re:Counter-suit

[sribe]

I'm going to be surprised if Amazon wins this one, even in the People's Democratic Republic of California.

??? Apparently you do not realize that CA has some of the strongest laws in the nation restricting non-compete agreements. CA is actually the least likely state in the country for Amazon to win this.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[queequeg1]

Not in situations like this, where it appears regular employees are involved. They're only enforceable when you're dealing with the sale of a business interest or dissolution of a partnership or LLC. But if I just walk in off the street and go to work for someone in CA who makes me sign a non-compete, the agreement will be completely unenforceable no matter how narrowly it's written.

Here's a decent discussion of the law:

http://ymsllp.com/news-and-pub...

As far as I know, CA is the only state that is so restrictive. Most others use some sort of reasonableness test based on time/geographical limits.

Re:Non-compete agreements are BS.

[whoever57]

A non compete that says 'for one year, you may not program computers for any of our clients or competitors' is enforceable (unless the whole industry is your competitor).

Not in California. There is a small set of exceptions where non-competes can be enforced, but none of them apply to a regular employee (they apply to business owners and principals). Furthermore, non-compete agreements from other states cannot be enforced in California courts.