Yesterday, Google unveiled its new Google Wallet app. Now, eBay’s PayPal is suing Google and two of its senior executives, Osama Bedier and Stephanie Tilenius—both former PayPal employees—for allegedly stealing trade secrets that eBay was planning to use for its own wireless payment technology.
The lawsuit claims that PayPal and Google had been in negotiations for two years to create a mobile payments system together, but just as the deal was about to be finalized, Google backed out, and Tilenius (who had already defected to Google) hired the PayPal exec in charge of the negotiations, Bedier, who then convinced other PayPal employees to join him.
According to the complaint, Bedier used confidential PayPal information to help develop Google Wallet. He subsequently pitched it to merchants, providing potential partners with comparisons between Google’s and PayPal’s planned products. “In particular… Bedier’s comparisons incorporate PayPal trade secrets, including PayPal’s schedule for deployment, anticipated features, and back-end approach to mobile payment, point of sale, and the benefits of a wallet in the cloud,” states the lawsuit.
