Lyft Is Suing A Former Exec Who Allegedly Took Company Secrets To Uber

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uber lyft Travis Kalanick John Zimmer

Reuters/Wikimedia

John Zimmer (left), the founder of Lyft, and Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber.

Lyft is accusing a former executive of sharing company secrets with rival Uber, reports The Wall Street Journal's Douglas MacMillan.

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Lyft has filed a lawsuit against its former chief operating officer, Travis VanderZanden, whom it alleges downloaded a number of confidential documents to his personal Dropbox in August.

Those documents included financial data and information on future products, according to The Journal.

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VanderZanden joined Uber in October.

Lyft learned that VanderZanden allegedly took the proprietary information with him because his personal Dropbox account was linked to his company laptop.

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VanderZanden's former employer is also accusing him of poaching Lyft employees, which it claims is a violation of his confidentiality agreement.

A Lyft spokesperson gave Business Insider the following statement:

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. 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.

We've reached out to Uber and will update this post when we hear back.

Here's Lyft's complaint against VanderZanden:

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Lyft Complaint Against VanderZanden