On the day Google unveiled its much anticipated mobile wallet, PayPal has filed a lawsuit against the search engine giant and two former staffers, accusing them of "misappropriating" m-payment-related trade secrets.
The suit, filed in a state court in San Jose, California, centres on former PayPal mobile chief Osama Bedier, who was poached by Google in January after nine years at the payments firm.
PayPal and its parent eBay are suing Google, Bedier and Stephanie Tilenius, a former eBay staffer who is now vice president of e-commerce at Google and accused of recruiting Bedier in violation of a contractual agreement.
The suit says that in his role at PayPal, Bedier helped shape the company's mobile strategy, knows its trade secrets and is misappropriating them at Google and sharing them with major retailers being courted by both firms.
PayPal worked with Google for three years developing a deal where PayPal would serve as a payment option for mobile application purchases on the Android Market. The talks, led by Bedier, saw PayPal give Google an "extensive education in mobile payments".
Yet, at the point when the deal was being finalised, Bedier was in the process of negotiating a move to Google, without telling PayPal of this "conflicting position".
PayPal also claims that just days before leaving, Bedier "transferred up-to-date versions of documents outlining PayPal's mobile payment and point of sale strategies to his non-PayPal computer".
You can read the suit here:
Download the document now 2.1 mb (PDF File)