Soon after Google officially announced its plans to enter the mobile payments market with the Google Wallet, PayPal quickly countered with a lawsuit against Google and two former PayPal executives now in charge of mobile payments at Google. According to TechCrunch, the lawsuit alleges “misappropriation of trade secrets” and “breach of fiduciary duty.”
Osama Bedier, PayPal’s former vice president of mobile ventures, was courted for several months by executives at Google, including Android chief Andy Rubin, and Bedier’s formal PayPal colleague Stephanie Tilenius, who now runs Commerce and Payments at Google. Prior to Bedier’s recruitment, Google had been negotiating with PayPal for about two years to power payments on its mobile devices; just before the deal was signed, however, Google backed off and hired Bedier.
The PayPal lawsuit accuses Bedier of abusing his knowledge of PayPal’s mobile payments strategies, using the same ideas and strategies to help design the Google Wallet.
“Bedier has been and is improperly comparing Google’s products and services with PayPal’s products and services in discussions with customers that both PayPal and Google are courting,” the lawsuit reads. “Bedier’s comparisons incorporate PayPal trade secrets, including PayPal’s schedule for deployment, anticipated features, and back-end approach to mobile payment, point of sale, and the benefits of a wallet in the cloud.”
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