Lyft's former COO Travis VanderZanden stole proprietary information from the company before leaving to work for Uber, according to a complaint filed by Lyft in court on Wednesday. The complaint, reported by TechCrunch, reveals that Lyft is suing VanderZanden for allegedly downloading company files, like strategies and financial information, to a personal account right before he left.
"We are disappointed to have to take this step, but this unusual situation has left us no choice but to take the necessary legal action to protect our confidential information," Lyft said in a statement about the complaint. "We are incredibly proud of the dedicated and people-powered culture that we’ve fostered to support drivers, passengers and the entire Lyft community and we will not tolerate this type of behavior."
VanderZanden now works at Uber helping grow its international presence, but things could get sticky for both him and Uber if the complaint goes to court and Lyft wins. Lyft has a whole timeline of events of how VanderZanden stole the information over a weekend right after telling the company that he would be resigning. Lyft claims to have determined all of this with a digital forensics examination of VanderZanden's company laptop. If VanderZanden did do it, he clearly wasn't worried about covering up his tracks.
The documents and emails are more than just a few spreadsheets, according to Lyft, which said in the complaint that there are "historic and future financial information, strategic planning materials like marketing plans and product plans, customer lists and data, international growth documents, and private personnel information," among other things.
Lyft is also accusing VanderZanden of other contract breaches, including trying to get other Lyft employees to join him at Uber. Uber recently took on former Lyft executive vice president of operations Stephen Schnell, who has close ties with VanderZanden from when they both worked for carwash on-demand app Cherry (before it was acquired by Lyft). Lyft apparently asked Uber to look into the problem before taking it to the courts, but Uber denied having any documents it shouldn't have.
Don't expect any quick resolution of this matter. There will be lots more legal filings and plenty of accusations hurled before it all gets resolved, most likely with some kind of settlement. Uber and Lyft have accused each other of a lot worse than poaching employees. This is in many ways just another batter between the two ride-share rivals. But it could serve to damage one or the other enough to give its opponent a crucial advantage in the larger war.
