While it seems to be largely under the radar in the legal-news sphere, Michael Arrington’s lawsuit against his former business partner is the buzz of the technology world.
Arrington, a former lawyer (about which, more later), is most famous as the founder of TechCrunch, one of the most-popular technology blogs (if you somehow haven’t heard of it, trust us, it’s big – about 3 times bigger than Above the Law and Law.com combined).
Some time ago, he decided that he, and thus, the world, needed a tablet-profile device dedicated to casual internet use (no keyboard, no local storage, comfortable form factor, etc.). He kicked the idea around in a series of blog posts and eventually started development of what came to be known as the CrunchPad.
Two days before the product was to launch, things went south. Way south.
Details, including the BigLaw angle, after the jump.
Basically, Arrington’s side of the story is that his business partner pulled the rug out at the last minute, and decided to (try to) bring the product to market without him. The product he brought to them to build.
That led to his filing a complaint (also embedded below) in the Northern District of California alleging violation of the Lanham Act, breach of fiduciary duty, misappropriation of business ideas, fraud and deceit, and unfair competition.
The manufacturer/business partner was a company called Fusion Garage. Not surprisingly the dispute between two technology companies bounced around between blogs and video conference “liveblogs” (before ending up in court, natch). CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan responded to Arrington’s initial post in a webcast, claiming basically that his company did all of the work, was already developing something similar, etc. Most importantly, there was no contract. Based on that, they’re going the rest of the way alone, rebranding the product as “JooJoo” and getting ready to accept pre-orders.
Now Arrington is no stranger to BigLaw:
Arrington attended Claremont McKenna College (BA Economics, 1992) and Stanford Law School (JD, 1995), and practiced as a corporate and securities lawyer at two law firms: O’Melveny & Myers and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. His clients included idealab, Netscape, Pixar, Apple and a number of startups, venture funds and investment banks. He also co-authored a book on initial public offerings.
In 1999 he left WSGR to join RealNames as VP Business Development and General Counsel. In 2000 he cofounded Achex, an online payments company. Achex was acquired by First Data Corp in 2001 for $32 million. Achex is now the back end infrastructure to Western Union online.
Arrington worked in an operational role at a Carlyle backed startup in London, founded and ran two companies in Canada (Zip.ca and Pool.com), was COO to a Kleiner backed company called Razorgator, and consulted to other companies, including Verisign.
That leads us scratching our head at two questions:
1- How could he have gone so far down this path without signing a development contract with Fusion Garage?
2- Why did he use Winston & Strawn instead of either of his previous employers?
The lawyers on the filing are San Francisco IP litigation partners Andrew Bridges (Stanford BA ‘76, Oxford BA ‘80, MA ‘85, Harvard JD ‘83) and David Bloch (Reed BA ‘93, George Washington JD ‘96), and associate Nicholas Short.
By the way, you think we’re kidding about lawyers taking name ordering seriously? Last we checked, B-R comes after B-L in the alphabet, but Bridges’s name comes before his partner’s. Bridges (whom we’ve never met and who could be the most-modest guy in the world for all we know – anyone know him? Leave a comment!) also includes in his bio a quote of someone else (Chambers) calling him “a trademark genius.”
SF-38-303-C2_20091210160410_00000001 -
Related posts:
Bridges came to Winston from Wilson Sonsini.
Ah, thanks. They probably worked together at WSGR around 98-99 (after O'Melveny, before RealNames for Arrington). Barnes switched in April 2004.
I am not an attorney. I heard about this website on Fox News. They did a piece on Lawyer’s in New York who were paid $75,000 not to come to work. Is there anyway to hire one of them real cheap since they are already getting paid to do nothing? I want to start a non-profit shelter for Cats. Ferrel and homeless. I don’t know how to get started and you may not have any ideas or even want to help, but I was always told it never hurts to ask. So I am asking.
I live in Missouri. Anyone with any free time or free advice please feel free to respond. I understand if no one is willing, but again, It never hurts to ask..
On another note, is there anyone who can file a court case against Harry Reid for bribing the Nebraska Senator. How can one state of the Union (Nebraska) get away with not paying taxes when every other state must. Isn’t that unconstitutional. I am no lawyer, but I believe it is unconstitutional and no one is doing anything about it. Where are all the lawyers when you need one.