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SI am asking this on behalf of a friend.
He started a IT services company 3 years ago and setup decent earnings with doing marketing single handedly.
Very soon he got multiple projects for software development and could not handle the work quantum alone. He recruited his college juniors who were freshers with no experience and knowledge of the work domain.
He setup a team of 5 with one person out of the 5 as a business development executive to help him generate leads which he would close, remaining 4 being core engineers working on projects.
Being quality and customer centric he grew his team and customer base to 50 engineers and 150 customers in 2.5 years.
He was very naive (I think) since he did not restrict the client details from his business development team and also all proprietary tools and tech that belonged to the firm was also not restricted (even the source code etc).
6 months back the business development executive (the college junior who was part of early team) and the early engineer downloaded all the customer details and technical data and resigned.
They then contacted all his customers and told them that the earlier company has been shut down and to give them projects instead of the old company. They created LinkedIn page for themselves and new company and blocked my friend so he couldn’t see that.
My friend has learned about this recently and he is devastated. He has reached a very bitter place where building team and trusting anyone now seems impossible.
My questions legally what are his options?
PS:- He did have a standard employee agreement with non disclosure and non compete clause in it.
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BLawyer here.
I have faced an identical situation once before (that also involved a software company). Your strategy should be to file Civil and Criminal Proceedings against him. You will have to file a suit for damages against this person for for the tort of deceit, infringement of your intellectual property, violation of the terms of the NDA, and the like. This is how you will recover the money you have lost and the harm that you have suffered.
Your criminal action will have to be focused on two things – dishonest misappropriation of property and criminal breach of trust. You will have to file Complaint cases (i.e., a private case). This will create pressure and force him to settle. If not, it will definitely make his life a little miserable. But you should not delay and approach a lawyer immediately and take legal action ASAP.
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UHow weak was his client relationship if all of them were just willing to immediately give their business to someone else?
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SI think clients are looking for ways to pay less and from what I understand they offer cheaper discount on stolen tech and work. So anything they are earning is a bonus.
But in any case, the matter is of principal ig. Even if I put my car keys on the porch with my car, doesn’t mean someone can and should steal it (like asking for it) as an example.
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