While the following is speculation because I have been unable to find a copy of a Complaint or other papers starting a legal action, the dispute most likely is focused on alleged theft of trade secrets in the form of customer lists (e.g., e-mail addresses and contact information for past buyers), or ownership and copyright in the application code or scripts that run the site. The legal status of who owns item listings is sufficiently unclear as to be an undesirable complication in the litigation for SG, and trade secret and code copyright claims are "enough," so I doubt there is any dispute over item listings except to the extent that the number of HipStamp listings is an indirect measure of the success of the site for damages purposes. In particular, trade secret misappropriation claims relating to customer lists are among the oldest and best-established kinds of trade secret claims in terms of case law, and are usually easy for a judge (or, in the US, a jury) to resolve. If the customer data was kept secret by SG using reasonable measures, and HipStamp copied and used it, case over, and all revenue ever earned by HipStamp becomes the measure of damages.
The customer data, if it is produced by one party to another in the discovery process, usually is provided only subject to the terms of a "protective order" that limits disclosure to "attorneys eyes only." That is, if SG has customer data that it regards as a trade secret, Mark of HipStamp doesn't get to see it, only his lawyers do, and vice versa. The substance of that data isn't important to the case; the core issues are whether it existed, whether it was kept secret with reasonable measures, and whether it was copied or taken. The nature of the transactions, amounts, items, etc., isn't important except to add up the total revenue generated by HipStamp as a damages measure. Therefore, anyone with past dealings with HipStamp probably doesn't need to worry about a disclosure of data, or being contacted.
If the foregoing is accurate, it will be 12-18 months before the case is resolved.
Chris |
Posted 06/10/2016 05:52 am
