Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) has filed a lawsuit against a former employee Zoltan Szabadi for accepting the job with Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL). Amazon filed a lawsuit on 27 June in Seattle, Washington claiming that Szabadi’s acceptance to take a job in Google somehow breached the contract he signed with Amazon, according to Geek Wire.
Google’s own terms not enough
The lawsuit claims thatSzabadi was deeply involved in the marketing of Amazon’s cloud computing business to the clients and “played a significant role in developing Amazon’s business strategy and direction in this area.” Within the contract, it was mentioned that he is not allowed to leave the company to work for another major company.
However, Google’s own employment terms restrict Szabadi to solicit any business from Amazon or hold a meeting with any customer he held within the six months before accepting a new role.
According to Amazon, Google’s ban on Szabadi does not comply with the terms of the non-compete, non-solicitation and trade secret restrictions in Szabadi’s employment agreement with Amazon.
The case comes in the wake of fiercely increasing competition between Google and Amazon, in the field of storage and cloud computing.
Amazon asking more stringent injunction
Previously, also, a similar case occurred when Daniel Powers, a former Amazon Web Services vice-president left the company to take a job in Google. Amazon banned him to take up any such jobs for 18 months that compete with Google’s cloud computing business.
Both the cases are nearly similar to each other, but Amazon has made some modification based on previous ruling. In the previous filing, Amazon banned any activity that directly or indirectly supports any aspect of Google’s cloud computing business that is similar to Amazon’s cloud computing business for 18 months. In Szabadi’s case, the company is asking more stringent injunctions, which restricts him “from engaging in any activities that directly or indirectly support any aspect of Google’s cloud computing business with partners or resellers.”
The lawsuit will be closely monitored by the tech industry as it could set a new benchmark for the employment agreements that some large tech companies require employees to sign at the time of joining.
