Fewer than 24-hours after after Google announced its new mobile payments program, PayPal filed suit against the Internet search giant for allegedly infringing upon the company’s mobile payment “trade secrets.”
“Spending time in courtrooms is generally not our thing,” writes Amanda Pires, Senior director or PayPal global communications, on the PayPal Blog. “We prefer to compete and innovate, serving our customers by offering the best way to pay and be paid. That’s how you really win. But sometimes the behaviors of people and competitors make legal action the only meaningful way for a company to protect one of its most valuable assets – its trade secrets.”
Based on the assertions made in the lawsuit, which was filed in a California Superior Court, Google’s Vice President of Payments Osama Bedier (a former PayPal executive) is essentially ripping off his old boss by giving Google access to PayPal’s trade secrets.
According to PayPal, Bedier is “leading Google’s efforts to bring point of sale technologies and services to retailers on its behalf. Bedier and Google have misappropriated PayPal trade secrets by disclosing them within Google and to major retailers.”
“We spend a lot of time and energy creating the things that make PayPal unique and a preferred way to pay for almost 100 million people around the world,” Pires added. “We treat PayPal’s ‘secrets’ seriously, and take it personally when someone else doesn’t. So we made a decision today. We filed a lawsuit against Google and two former colleagues who now work there, Osama Bedier and Stephanie Tilenius.”
On Thursday, Google introduced the long awaited “Google Wallet” program. The company says its aim is to fuse the retail and mobile experience together in an effort to create “tomorrow’s best shopping experience.” The service will roll out this summer (in New York and San Francisco) from Google and its partners – Mastercard, Citigroup, First Data and Sprint. A national roll-out is expected for later in the year.
