When Your Former Boss Sues You for Starting a Startup

Post by chrismcb » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 5:56 AM UTC

grizzles wrote: post #66

paulsutter wrote: post #30

My first instinct is to congratulate Shred for standing up to the big bully. That was really almost what I posted. But pick apart Shred's note, and really it's an emotional appeal based on two ideas: 1. That the sole test of stealing ideas is source code that has been copied verbatim. 2. That the only possible secrets of Smule are features implemented in released products. These are pretty weak legs to stand on. They…

lol @ preposterous. That's the law yo. Copyright - Source code that has been copied. Patent - Monopoly on an idea. Trade Secret Law - N/A. They are former employees. Non Compete Agreement - Agreements in restraint of competititon are void in California. Shred's story sounds credible to me. The fact that Smule offered to make this lawsuit go away in exchange for equity sounds a lot like extortion to me. Why would they…

Post by mcv » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 10:28 AM UTC

mikeshreds wrote: post #33

joshuaheard wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His quote make it appear as if the lawsuit is in bad faith. If Shred wins, they may have a case for malicious prosecution.

Yes, I completely agree. Thing is, we'd have to go through the full legal process before we could pursue that. Smule filed the lawsuit months before we even had a product or got into YC, they probably thought we wouldn't make it this far, let alone another two years.

Post by jaynate » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 12:20 PM UTC

inflagranti wrote: post #207

jaynate wrote: post #176

Several rookie mistakes in here by the Shred team. First of all if you are gong to start a company while working for someone else, get an explicit agreement in writing before starting that venture. Second, there should have been an agreement/contract in place for doing the additional work which was requested by Smule. The claims of theft could still be made by Smule but Shred's story loses credibility for me because…

I so hate this attitude about people acting in good faith doing 'rookie mistakes'. I'm just answering to this post, but it's by far not the only one along those lines. Why does everything have to be done on explicit contract basis? How can an altruistic act of one party (helping out after leaving the company for free) be turned against them!? Where will this end!? Will I have to get in writing that this was in no way…

Post by gearoidoc » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 9:05 PM UTC

chc wrote: post #101

gearoidoc wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you declare their lack of interest in investigating - the Medium post is 2 hours old. If you think that its simply a case of not using your old employers code then you're naive (See: The Social Network). FTR: I'm not on either side here but I'm unsure if this blog post was the wisest move.

> How can you declare their lack of interest in investigating Both by Shred's account and Y Combinator's, Shred has repeatedly offered to submit their code for third-party review to see if it is copied from whatever Smule thinks it's copied from, but Smule has declined every time ("claiming, although they most certainly know better, that Shred could have successfully obfuscated their code making such a review useless…

Post by gearoidoc » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 11:21 PM UTC

chc wrote: post #238

gearoidoc wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed my point: "If you think that its simply a case of not using your old employers code then you're naive". A third-party code review would do little or nothing to prove whether Shred have "stolen" anything. Suppose you and I both wrote our own authentication systems (the horror!) - I'm sure we'd create much the same functionality wise but our code would probably look vastly different. The code base is not imp…

Then what is important? What do you figure was stolen here that is concrete enough to be a cause for legal action but so nebulous that the presence of the stolen "thing" in Shred's code base would be completely invisible to third-party investigators who were looking for it specifically?