Architect Eli Attia has brought a lawsuit against Google accusing it of racketeering and stealing trade secrets. Racketeering is basically defined as dishonest and fraudulent business dealings. Attia claims he was developing a new technology for constructing buildings when Google approached him in 2010. Attia had already put 50 years of research into this new technology and struck a deal with Google to commercialize it as software. The project was dubbed “Project Genie” and was being worked on at Google X.
According to Attia, Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin wanted him out of the project so they “pretended” to kill it. They then took the research to spin off their own company.
“The real adding-insult-to-injury was Google telling him the project had been canceled and they weren’t going forward with it when in fact they were going full blast on it,” Attia’s lawyer Eric Buether said in an interview Friday.
“It’s cheaper to steal than to develop your own technology,” Buether said. “You can take it from somebody else and you have a virtually unlimited budget to fight these things in court.”
“Google would solicit a party to share with it highly confidential trade secrets under a non-disclosure agreement, conduct negotiations with the party, then terminate negotiations with the party professing a lack of interest in the party’s technology, followed by the unlawful use of the party’s trade secrets in its business,” Attia said in the filing.
This isn’t the first time Google has been accused of racketeering and stealing trade secrets. The Space Data Corporation filed suit against the company over Project Loon. According to The Mercury News, Google has had six lawsuits similar to this with five of them going Google’s why due to procedural issues. Small companies often have a hard time successfully going through the legal system since they don’t have the resources and lawyers Google has.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out and if Attia will be able to successfully see this case through. Be sure to click the source link below for comprehensive coverage.
What do you think of the most recent racketeering charges against Google? Let us know what you think in the comments below, or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.
[button link=”http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/10/06/google-accused-of-racketeering-in-lawsuit-claiming-pattern-of-trade-secrets-theftt/” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: The Mercury News[/button]
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