IANAL, but: for all the comments stating "there are two sides to every lawsuit," let me say that oftentimes there aren't. And just because someone threatens to sue someone else does not mean the party being sued did anything wrong, it just means plaintiff wanted to sue the defendant.
I'm speaking from personal experience, a former employer threatened to sue me for unspecified 'trade secret infringement,' and it cost over $20k in legal fees to convince ourselves we were covering all our bases.
The problem is there's a basic asymmetry in these situations: it costs very little to initiate a lawsuit, or even just threaten to initiate a lawsuit. We were so scared we spent money on lawyers (and a second opinion!) before anything had even hit the court system.
Probably obvious advice we should've taken: do nothing until they'd actually filed something, then respond only to specific allegations. The burden of proof is on the plaintiff, and California has some really excellent worker protections around IP etc. Had we just ignored them it probably would've blown over.
Shred sounds like they're on top of this, but if anyone needs the name of a good IP lawyer in CA (he's in LA), message me and I'll put you in touch. I would love to refer him some business because he gave me hours of free advice, and was generally very good about keeping costs down. (Relatively speaking. Signing a check over to a law firm feels like the worst use of capital.)
I'm speaking from personal experience, a former employer threatened to sue me for unspecified 'trade secret infringement,' and it cost over $20k in legal fees to convince ourselves we were covering all our bases.
The problem is there's a basic asymmetry in these situations: it costs very little to initiate a lawsuit, or even just threaten to initiate a lawsuit. We were so scared we spent money on lawyers (and a second opinion!) before anything had even hit the court system.
Probably obvious advice we should've taken: do nothing until they'd actually filed something, then respond only to specific allegations. The burden of proof is on the plaintiff, and California has some really excellent worker protections around IP etc. Had we just ignored them it probably would've blown over.
Shred sounds like they're on top of this, but if anyone needs the name of a good IP lawyer in CA (he's in LA), message me and I'll put you in touch. I would love to refer him some business because he gave me hours of free advice, and was generally very good about keeping costs down. (Relatively speaking. Signing a check over to a law firm feels like the worst use of capital.)