{"id":1112,"date":"2012-10-18T01:08:07","date_gmt":"2012-10-18T01:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=1112"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:54:06","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:54:06","slug":"zynga-accuses-former-manager-of-cityville-of-stealing-secret-files","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/zynga-accuses-former-manager-of-cityville-of-stealing-secret-files\/","title":{"rendered":"Zynga Accuses Former Manager of Cityville of Stealing Secret Files"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wednesday, October 17, 2012, by Jonathan Ambrose
\nThe online gaming company Zynga has filed a suit against a former employee for trade secret misappropriation<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 In a complaint filed October 12<\/a>, the company accuses Patmore, who was the general manager of the game Cityville, of stealing secret files before leaving to work for rival game company Kixeye.
\nAccording to Zynga, Patmore left a \u201cforensic trail\u201d<\/a> of evidence implicating his theft. \u00a0The complaint describes in detail<\/a> Patmore\u2019s creation of a folder of secret data (conveniently titled \u201cZynga\u201d) and uploading it to a personal cloud storage account. It seems that Zynga keeps a pretty close eye on its employees.
\nThe data that was allegedly stolen<\/a> contained a variety of information, including files about Zynga\u2019s monetization strategies, new game concepts, and Zynga\u2019s strategies for choosing successful games.\u00a0 Zynga claims that this information would be very valuable for their less successful competitor Kixeye<\/a>, where Patmore is currently working.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately,\u201d said a Kixeye spokesperson, \u201cthis appears to be Zynga’s new employee retention strategy: Suing former employees to scare current employees into staying.”\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Patmore is also accused of breach of contract. He signed a document<\/a> vowing to keep secret any proprietary information that was shared with him in his capacity as an employee. Patmore was asked to sign a similar document upon his resignation confirming that he did not take any proprietary evidence, but refused.
\nAccording to Zynga\u2019s general counsel<\/a>, Patmore does not dispute that he took the 763 files that contained the allegedly confidential data.
\n\u00a0On Friday, Zynga was granted a temporary restraining order<\/a>.\u00a0 Patmore is not allowed to use, discuss or copy the info in the documents, nor to engage in activity that would involve using those trade secrets contained in the documents.
\nZynga was involved in a similar law suit in 2009<\/a>, when they accused Playdom, a Disney company, of misappropriating secret files taken by former employees.
\nZynga has not implicated Kixeye in their current suit, but seem to be focusing on Patmore<\/a>, the former employee.\u00a0 This has led to speculation that the suit is meant as a warning to current employees against copying secret data. \u201cUnfortunately,\u201d said a Kixeye spokesperson<\/a>, \u201cthis appears to be Zynga’s new employee retention strategy: Suing former employees to scare current employees into staying.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wednesday, October 17, 2012, by Jonathan Ambrose The online gaming company Zynga has filed a suit against a former employee for trade secret misappropriation.\u00a0\u00a0 In a complaint filed October 12, the company accuses Patmore, who was the general manager of the game Cityville, of stealing secret files before leaving to work for rival game company …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1112"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7676,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112\/revisions\/7676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}