News

Microsoft Accuses Former Employee of Stealing Cloud Strategy Data

• By Chris Paoli
• February 11, 2011

Microsoft filed a motion with a Washington State Superior Court on Thursday that accuses Matt Miszewski, former market development manager for Microsoft's government group, of stealing 600 MB of documents the company considered confidential when taking a new position at Salesforce.com.

The motion alleges that Miszewski lied about and supplied Salesforce.com, a Microsoft rival in the CRM market, with an estimated 25,000 pages of restricted information dealing with Microsoft's cloud strategies for 2011. "[These] would be highly valuable to Microsoft's competitors, including Salesforce.com, both in terms of capitalizing on Microsoft's efforts to prepare these materials, as well as revealing in detail Microsoft's own competitive strategies," Microsoft wrote in the motion.

This contradicts Miszewski's assurance that he had only taken personal items after resigning on Dec. 31, 2010.

This is not the first time Microsoft has sought legal action against Miszewski in his short absence: Two weeks after Miszewski resigned from his previous position and accepted a vice president position with Salesforce.com's global public sector, Microsoft filed a temporary restraining order against him working at the CRM company, citing a breach in a noncompete contract he had signed. The contract prohibits a Microsoft employee to work for a direct competitor for a year after leaving.

The new motion is seen to be a play to transform the previous temporary restraining order into a longer-term injunction that prohibits Miszewsking from working at Salesforce.com.

Neither Miszewski or Salesforce.com has commented on this issue.