Original Complaint Filed by Amazon
In Seattle, former Amazon Web Services Strategic Partnership Manager Zoltan Szabadi was sued by Amazon for violation of his non-compete agreement. Szabadi is now with Google in their cloud platform business. The lawsuit alleges:
Szabadi was directly and integrally involved with the marketing of Amazon’s cloud computing business to its partners and resellers, and played a significant role in developing Amazon’s business strategy and direction in this area . . . Szabadi was involved in developing, implementing and managing Amazon Web Services’ strategy for many of its partners, and was the first point of contact for most partners who were considering working with Amazon.
Cloud services is big business and the case confirms the rivalry between these two tech giants. It also is another example of Amazon prosecuting its non-competes. Previously, Amazon went downt his road with another employee named Dan Powers and essentially lost. Szabadi has the same lawyer as Powers, Keith Petrak, and he claims the agreement is overlybroad and chills the basic right of an employee to work. Here is a link to the lawsuit. In review of the docket it appears that Amazon chose not to seek a temproary restraining order and that Szabadi has filed counterclaim. It is also interesting to note that Amazon did not sue Google but instead focused its efforts entirely on Szabadi.
We’ll continue to monitor this lawsuit. It looks like it won’t be going away anytime soon.
