San Francisco "mid-core" game developer Kixeye says that a lawsuit filed against it by Zynga is nothing but an attempt to scare its employees into staying and to steal trade secrets away from Kixeye.
Zynga first filed suit against former studio GM Alan Patmore last month, claiming that he shared valuable trade secrets with his new employer Kixeye through proprietary Zynga files he kept on his Dropbox account. Zynga later added Kixeye itself to the complaint.
According to the counter-complaint, Zynga waited until some fifty-eight days after Patmore's resignation to file the complaint, intentionally holding off until he was employed at Kixeye.
"Zynga's interest was never in taking prompt action to protect its information, but rather trying to let just enough time pass after Mr. Patmore's departure so that it could take aim at Kixeye in addition to Mr. Patmore," the complaint reads.
"If Zynga's lawsuit were truly about protecting its alleged trade secrets or other confidential information, Zynga would not have waited over five weeks after Mr. Patmore's departure to scrub his computer for evidence of some potential wrongdoing."
Kixeye is accusing Zynga of trying to infiltrate its own trade secrets through a court order, claiming that Zynga's recent moves into the mid-core space (specifically, the acquisitions of developers A Bit Lucky and November Software) shows that it is trying to encroach on a market that Kixeye already has a foothold in. The company calls the suit a "Trojan Horse to gain access to Kixeye's own confidential, valuable information and trade secrets."
The counter-complaint also alleges that Zynga is intentionally creating an environment where its employees will be too scared to resign and take a new job at Kixeye, for fear of being sued themselves.
Announcements
Kixeye to Zynga: Stop trying to rip us off
San Francisco mid-core social game developer Kixeye has fired back at a suit brought against it by Zynga with a counter-argument that claims the entire suit is nothing but a "Trojan horse" to steal Kixeye's secrets.