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Zynga moving forward in lawsuit against former Cityville GM over theft
Zynga has earned the requisite crystals to move forward on its lawsuit against former CityVille general manager Alan Patmore, who it accuses of stealing company secrets for use at his new employer Kixeye. All Things D reports the social games company has been granted its request to depose Patmore, have forensic experts search his electronic devices and extend the restraining order preventing Patmore from destroying or deleting any information he obtained."Patmore does not dispute that he took 763 files from Zynga, which contained confidential game designs from teams around the company, and that he transferred those files to his computer at Kixeye where he's currently the VP of Product," Zynga attorney Jay Monahan said in a statement.All Things D also received a statement from Kixeye CEO Will Harbin, who obviously didn't feel like pulling any punches: "Zynga is burning to the ground and bleeding top talent and instead of trying to fix the problems - better work environment and better products - they are resorting to the only profit center that has ever really worked for them: their legal department."Zynga claims the files Patmore allegedly took would help someone replicate its business, along with projections and plans for 10 unreleased games. Harbin concluded his statement by asking why his company would want to emulate Zynga's business when The Ville publisher has seen a 75 percent decline in its stock since its debut?
Zynga suing former Cityville GM over theft of trade secrets
A former Zynga general manager has allegedly stolen trade secrets, the social games company claims in a new lawsuit. Zynga believes Alan Patmore, who previously worked on Cityville, uploaded a number of company assets to a Dropbox account from his company computer, both on the day before and day of his departure from the company. Said assets included, among other things, information on Zynga's game mechanics, internal assessments of Cityville's performance, monetization plans, company emails and design documents (including the final design document for an as yet unreleased game).Zynga feels Patmore, who now works for social game company Kixeye, will use the information to directly compete with his former employer. Specifically, Zynga states that the stolen data "could be used to improve a competitor's internal understanding and know-how of core game mechanics and monetization techniques, its execution, and ultimately its market standing to compete more effectively with Zynga."Furthermore, the company claims that, upon leaving the company, Patmore refused to sign a "termination certification," which "merely reaffirmed" his contractual obligations, among them not to take any of the company's "sensitive data."
