SAN FRANCISCO – A New York-based company alleges that a former Novato employee misappropriated confidential information from it and provided the information to a competitor.
Henry Schein Inc. filed a complaint on June 9 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against Jennifer Cook alleging breach of written contract, misappropriation of trade secrets, unfair competition and other counts.
According to the complaint, the plaintiff alleges that it suffered damages to its business as a result of its confidential documents being used to solicit potential customers for a competitor by the defendant. The plaintiff holds Cook responsible because the defendant allegedly took several trade secrets and confidential company documents with her upon her resignation from the company in order to solicit plaintiff's customers to become Patterson Dental customers, a direct competitor.
The plaintiff seeks damages, disgorgement of all amounts paid by plaintiff to defendant, injunction against the defendant, return all of plaintiff's property, punitive damages in the amount of $1 million, interest, all legal fees and any other relief as the court deems just. It is represented by Jeffrey G. Knowles and Andrew Schalkwyk of Coblentz Patch Duffy & Bass LLP in San Francisco.
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Case number 3:16-cv-03166-JST