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"Lyfting" Trade Secrets? Lyft Sues Former Executive


Recently, Lyft sued its former chief operating officer, Travis VanderZanden, and alleged that he took more than 98,000 confidential and sensitive documents with him when he went to work for Uber, in violation of his employment contract.

Apparently, VanderZanden refused to turn over his company provided (and owned) laptop until Lyft sent a staff member to retrieve it.  As well, before VanderZanden left for Uber, he apparently synched his personal dropbox account with his Lyft laptop and made copies of 98,000 files and folders.  Lyft claims that these documents included historic and future financial information, strategic planning materials, customer lists and data, and international growth documents, among other items.   

For those who do not keep up with the ride sharing companies out there, Lyft and Uber are two of the bigger and more well known companies in the industry.  Uber has come under fire lately for several business practices that have been labeled as questionable.  With that being said, they apparently have an aggressive program in place to raise the company's profile and potentially expand into foreign markets.  In any event, this will be one to keep an eye on, as Lyft is surely cognizant of the potential harm that could happen (or might have already happened), if the claims that have been made against VanderZanden are true.


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