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Google Accused of Racketeering. Lawsuit Claims 'Pattern' Of Trade Secret Thefts (mercurynews.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the see-you-in-court dept.

schwit1 quotes the Mercury News: In an explosive new allegation, a renowned architect has accused Google of racketeering, saying in a lawsuit the company has a pattern of stealing trade secrets from people it first invites to collaborate. Architect Eli Attia spent 50 years developing what his lawsuit calls "game-changing new technology" for building construction. Google in 2010 struck a deal to work with him on commercializing it as software, and Attia moved with his family from New York to Palo Alto to focus on the initiative, code-named "Project Genie." The project was undertaken in Google's secretive "Google X" unit for experimental "moonshots."

But then Google and its co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin "plotted to squeeze Attia out of the project" and pretended to kill it but used Attia's technology to "surreptitiously" spin off Project Genie into a new company, according to the lawsuit... This week, a judge in Santa Clara County Superior Court approved the addition of racketeering claims to the lawsuit originally filed in 2014. Attia's legal team uncovered six other incidents in which Google had engaged in a "substantially similar fact pattern of misappropriation of trade secrets" from other people or companies, according to a July 25 legal filing from Attia.
Wired reported yesterday that Project Loon -- also a Google X project -- "is embroiled in a lawsuit with Space Data, a small company accusing Alphabet of patent infringement, misappropriation of trade secrets, and breach of contract following a failed acquisition bid."

The lawyer for the racketeering suit complains Google can deploy a "virtually unlimited budget to fight these things in court."

6 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. When will people finally realize by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is a company not to be fucking trusted. I'm so done with Google - moved to Bing, Firefox, and any other replacement I can find.

    1. Re:When will people finally realize by mschwanke97402 · · Score: 5, Informative

      DuckDuckGo!

    2. Re: When will people finally realize by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      MS didn't steal technology they bought it. MS didn't own the dominate desktop applications for their own OS. DOS WordPerfect was the dominate word processor, DOS Lotus-123 was the dominate spreadsheet, DBASE was a leader of the desktop database, and Netscape owned 90% of the browser market. When MS moved from DOS to Windows most of these companies didn't put the effort into porting their applications to the new OS. They decided it was easier to sell their technologies to MS and reap a big pay day. However, Netscape surrendered a 90% market share due incompetent leadership. Even today their are a lot of people and companies who develop something new for the sole purpose of getting MS to buy them out.

    3. Re: When will people finally realize by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      MS didn't steal technology they bought it.

      You mean the way they didn't steal on-the-fly disk compression after a demonstration/discussion with Stacker? Or the way they didn't steal the design of their Dove-bar mouse after discussions with the original designer (can't recall the name ATM)?

      When MS moved from DOS to Windows most of these companies didn't put the effort into porting their applications to the new OS.

      Ri-i-ight. And Microsoft didn't withhold a buttload of API info from WordPerfect's devs while they used the info to improve Word.

      Do a little research before defending the evil empire, chum.

    4. Re: When will people finally realize by ChrisMaple · · Score: 3, Informative

      A court case decided that their implementation of disk compression was essentially a copy of Stacker's. It's not just the compression algorithm, it's also code details and user interface.

      Any undocumented API call in a closed source OS is secret. They are commonplace, often just because they're experimental features, but in Microsoft's case it was to gain a competitive advantage.

      Here's an example of how this might be done. Let's say that the OS has a documented call to put one character on the screen, which takes 1 microsecond, and an undocumented call to put up to 10,000 characters on the screen, which takes up to 50 microseconds. A program written by someone aware of the undocumented call can put 10,000 characters on the screen in 50 microseconds, but for anyone else putting 10,000 characters on the screen it's going to take 10,000 microseconds. That's a competitive advantage made possible by a secret API call.

      --
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  2. Re:Nice legal ploy. it will never work by taustin · · Score: 5, Informative

    The judge will laugh him out of court.

    The judge has already approved adding the racketeering charge to the suit. Not sure of the rules under California's RICO, but it's probably similar to federal rules. That means that the plaintiff has shown some pretty compelling evidence, and it becomes very difficult to stop it from proceeding to trial, once it's been certified.

    The police, or at least the DA have to be involved to file a racketeering charge. Not going to happen.

    Patently untrue. Both federal and California RICO statutes allow for private enforcement. A prosecutor would be necessary for criminal prosecution, but state RICO laws allow for treble damages in civil cases, which could easily run into the billions. It's difficult to do, but the judge has already been convinced to allow it.

    why is this news?

    Why do you comment on something you clearly know nothing about?