Former Zynga man Alan Patmore apologizes for his behavior.
When Alan Patmore, general manager of CityVille, jumped ship to Kixeye, it was alleged that he’d taken a bunch of Zynga’s trade secrets with him. Cue lawsuit, to which Kixeye responded with disdain. “Zynga is burning to the ground and bleeding top talent and instead of trying to fix the problems,” said Kixeye at the time, “[it is] resorting to the only profit center that has ever really worked for them: their legal department.” This week the legal department reached a settlement with Kixeye, and Patmore apologized for what he’d done. No word as to whether there was a cash component to this settlement; merely that it suited both parties to the dispute.
“I accept responsibility for making a serious mistake by copying and taking Zynga confidential information when I resigned from Zynga,” said Patmore. “I understand the consequences of my actions and I sincerely apologize to Zynga and my former colleagues.” The suit alleged that Patmore had uploaded 760 confidential files to Dropbox before leaving Zynga, and then tried to cover up his misdeeds by uninstalling Dropbox from his office computer. Among the files were 14 months worth of internal Zynga communications as well as internal assessments “of every game feature rolled out over the last quarter,” according to Zynga. Patmore never denied taking files but Kixeye, in a counter-suit, said that it had no interest in Zynga’s piddling trade secrets. In fact, Kixeye alleged, the lawsuit was just a ploy to get hold of Kixeye’s secrets, so Zynga could do what it did best and copy Kixeye’s winning strategy.
“Zynga Inc. and Kixeye Inc. have reached a mutually agreeable settlement of their litigation involving Alan Patmore in San Francisco Superior Court,” is all either party was prepared to say after the decision was announced. The Kixeye counter-suit was not directly referred to in the settlement announcement; it may have been settled or dropped as part of the agreement.
Source: Tech Crunch
