Amazon accuses one of its former employees for breaching a non-competition provision in his employment agreement after leaving Amazon and joining Google. The Internet retailer is taking the battle to court.
Zoltan Szabadi joined Amazon in 2008 on condition that Szabadi sign an agreement to protect Amazon's trade secrets by refraining from accepting job offers from direct competitors and soliciting partnerships with Amazon's clients within 18 months from leaving the company. Two years after, Szabadi became a strategic partnerships manager for Amazon Web Services (AWS), a division that provides cloud-based software services for enterprise clients, where he is responsible for finding partners willing to sell Amazon's cloud-based services.
Szabadi left Amazon in May to head Google's reseller ecosystem team, where his job responsibility includes essentially doing the same things he did for Amazon. Szabadi's lawyer defended his client's actions, saying Google and Szabadi have signed an agreement that prohibits Szabadi from doing business with Amazon clients with whom he has "reviewed confidential information" or made "material direct contact" within the first six months of his employment at Google. The agreement further requires Szabadi to, during the first six months, refrain from helping Google hire other Amazon employees.
But Amazon is apparently unhappy about Szabadi's six-month agreement with Google, saying it does not cover the non-compete terms specified in Szabadi's employment contract with the e-commerce company.
"Szabadi has commenced employment with Google and, upon information and belief, is or will soon begin supporting Google's competitive cloud computing business, including by directly or indirectly competing with Amazon for its existing or prospective partners and resellers, target markets and/or customers," writes [pdf] Amazon in court documents filed in court Friday. "Szabadi's breach of the Noncompetition Agreement will cause irreparable harm to Amazon and should therefore be enjoined as expressly authorized by the terms of the Noncompetition Agreement."
Amazon filed the case at the Superior Court of Washington in King County, where non-compete clauses have generally been known to survive court scrutiny. In California, where Google is based, the courts have struck down similar provisions.
In 2012, Amazon filed an almost identical case against its former vice president for AWS Daniel Powers, who also moved over to Google to become the search company's head of cloud platform sales. Although Amazon succeeded in convincing the federal court to prevent Powers from doing business with Amazon clients, U.S. District Judge Richard A. Jones reduced the ban from 18 to nine months.
"A general ban on Mr. Powers' competing against Amazon for other cloud computing customers is not a ban on unfair competition," the judge wrote [pdf] in his ruling. "It is a ban on competition generally."
