EMC claims Pure Storage stole trade secrets and staff in lawsuit

EMC has stepped up its war of words with rival Pure Storage by filing a lawsuit against the firm accusing it of stealing its trade secrets.

The storage behemoth has been embroiled in a series of legal spats recently with at least six former members of staff who it has accused of taking confidential company information with them when they left EMC to work at Pure Storage.

However, rather than just sue the employees themselves, EMC has now decided to take the fight to its Flash array making rival, and filed a lawsuit against Pure Storage with the US District Court of Massachusetts.

In the 48-page suit, the company accuses its competitor of colluding with former EMC staffers to misappropriate confidential company information and trade secrets totalling "tens of thousands" of pages.

"The activities advanced and directed by Pure Storage are part of a systematic and unlawful strategy intended to identify, target and convert valuable EMC assets for Pure Storage's benefit as [it] seems to brand itself as an innovator' in the enterprise storage market, apparently as part of its pre-IPO strategy," the document alleges.

The strongly worded document claims the alleged activities were "orchestrated or known to" the senior management team at Pure Storage, some of who are reported to be former EMC and VMware employees or investors.

"EMC competes vigorously and lawfully in the marketplace and expects indeed embraces the same conduct from its competitors," the suit continues.

"Unfortunately, rather than attempt to compete legitimately with EMC, Pure Storage has improperly obtained and benefited from critically sensitive EMC confidential information from former EMC employees," it adds.

This information is alleged to have been used to "target and raid with unnatural precision" EMC's bank of technical and sales staff, and allow Pure Storage to "unlawfully interfere" with the firm's long-standing customer relationships.

Since August 2011, it is claimed at least 44 EMC technical engineers and sales staff have left under "suspicious circumstances" to work for Pure Storage.

"In many instances, these individuals were among the highest performing EMC professionals in their positions in either the entire nation or in their assigned regions," the lawsuit states.

"Legitimate hiring in the open market would not result in such overwhelming recruitment of high-achieving employees from a single company."

The company also revealed it has sent cease and desist letters to former EMC employees and Pure Storage, and also took steps to remind the former about the agreements they made with the firm about not passing on confidential information to competitors once they leave.

"Because Pure Storage's unlawful activity has continued unabated despite EMC's prior efforts, [it] brings this action seeking relief that will finally put a stop [to] the underhanded conduct being orchestrated by Pure Storage and its executives, and to seek full redress for the harm this conduct has caused EMC," the documents adds.

Pure Storage has responded to the lawsuit by rubbishing EMC's claims in a blog post, claiming there is "no merit whatsoever to any of these complaints."

The post, written by Pure Storage CEO Scott Dietzen, also states the firm intends to "vigorously" defend itself against EMC's allegations.

"We believe in employee freedom and in hiring the very best, but at the same time, we have a strong policy against the use of any third party confidential information," Dietzen wrote.

"To do otherwise would be to compromise our core values of employee freedom and hiring the very best candidates that seek to join us."