Google Sued for $1B Over Outlook Migration Tool

A two-count lawsuit filed by Chicago company LimitNone alleges that Google misappropriated trade secrets and violated Illinois' consumer fraud laws when it developed "Google Email Uploader" which competes with LimitNone's "gMove" application. "Google claims its core philosophy is 'Don't be evil' but, simply put, they invited us to work with them, to trust them — and then stole our technology,'" said Ray Glassman, CEO of LimitNone, in a prepared statement. The lawsuit was filed by Kelley Drye & Warren LLP, the same commercial litigation group which challenged Google over the company's online advertising system.

Re:You've got a little evil there on your mouth...

[Intron]

What article? Business wire is a press release service. The "article" authors are listed at the bottom: Kelley Drye & Warren LLP, the lawyers who are suing google.

Re:Get Rich

[eln]

You really should have read the article. If what's said in the article is even partially true, it sure looks like Google acted in a pretty sleazy fashion. Apparently they were willing to boost this company's product until they realized how much money could be made from it, at which point they decided to build their own clone and give it away for free. It's like Netscape/IE all over again.

Re:Get Rich

[shadow349]

$1B is a ridiculous amount of money for this lawsuit

I'm guessing the amount is based on this (from TFA):

The lawsuit alleges the tool, which was originally named "MY GRATE" was later renamed, at Google's insistence, "gMove". Though the product retailed for $29, Google asked that LimitNone sell it to Google's customers for $19.

and

According to the complaint, Scott McMullan, a senior executive in the Google Apps partner program, told LimitNone that the potential for 50 million users - was "just too big to come from someone else" and that "this is how Google operates."

50 mil * $19 = $950 million

Re:Get Rich

[Overzeetop]

1. It's press release by the plaintiff's lawyers.

2. "until they realized how much money could be made from it, at which point they decided to build their own clone and give it away for free." WTF? That doesn't even make sense. We could make a fortune if we had this product, lets give it away for free and we'll all be rich!!! No. I'm not sure if Google cares _how_ the conversion is done, just that the users come to Google at some point in the transaction. A converter, while convenient if it's free, is just as valuable if somebody else sells it...as long as it it used.

Re:Get Rich

[morgan_greywolf]

And I'm willing to bet that once it happened, Microsoft would be more than happy to finance as many as possible.

Who? Microsoft? Financing [wikipedia.org] awsuits [wikipedia.org]? Nah, I'm sure they'd never do that.

Re:You've got a little evil there on your mouth...

[ozmanjusri]

I read the article, as well as several others on the same subject, before I submitted it.

It's a news story, and I know there's not a lot of information there, but remember Slashdot is a discussion site. I'm sure we'll be able to introduce tome interesting analysis ourselves rather than being spoonfed content by the news media.

If you're not sure where to start, how about looking at how hard it would be to export Outlook emails, and whether it would be particularly challenging to develop an app like this.

Re:Get Rich

[smidget2k4]

Offtopic, but that "old-lady vs McDonalds" lawsuit was actually valid, though it was taken by the tort-reform people and manipulated to seem like a silly lawsuit.

McDonalds had been warned several times by the FDA to lower the temperature of their coffee, as several people each year were severely burned by it. The woman was in the passenger seat, her son was driving, and they had pulled off to the side of the drive-thru so she could put sugar in the coffee. When opening the lid, the cup slipped and spilled on to her lap.

The woman suffered third degree burns over her thigh and groin area, totaling to be about 20% of her body, and second degree burns in her groin area.

She then contacted McDonalds, explaining the situation to them, and asked them to reimburse part of her medical bills (for burn treatment and skin grafts). They offered her $500. Since her bills were quickly climbing into the high tens of thousands of dollars, she sued for the cost of her medical expenses.

It was the jury that decided medical expenses were not enough, and awarded her punitive damages (to punish McDonalds) totaling one day's revenue in coffee sales. McDonalds appealed the decision, and an appellate judge overturned the punitive damages. She ended up getting somewhere around $200,000, which barely covered her medical expenses up to that point.

Sorry, that was very off topic, but that case is misused as an example for tort reform so often I felt it needed to be stated. There are other ridiculous cases, sure, but that really isn't one of them. More info here. [centerjd.org]

Re:Get Rich

[idontgno]

As you point out, Google's profit interest is in more migrations from Outlook. That means that anyone offering a Outloog migration tool is to Google's good. However, someone offering a converter for $$$ raises a barrier: some people won't pay for a converter; if they can't migrate for free they won't use Gmail. How do you overcome that barrier? Offer a converter for free. Yeah, the guys trying to sell their converter get shafted. But Google wins by getting more users who migrate off of Outlook.

That's the motivation point you seem to be neglecting. That's the ??? before "Profit!". In your words, that's WTF.

And yeah, I know, that's the story according to the plaintiff's legal team. We've unofficially heard one side of the story. (Yeah, unofficially. As you point out, it's a press release, not the actual filings.) So, there's obviously a lot more story to come. I hope Groklaw follows this one.

Re:That's plausible

[maxume]

Google is *valued* at $170 billion. What they are worth is less clear. They could certainly manage a $1 billion payout, as they are pulling in a multiple of that each quarter and they have $12 billion just sitting around, but it would do more than leave a bad taste in their mouth.

Re:Get Rich

[stiggystiggy]

~$1B == 50,000,000 users * $19 per user.

50,000,000 users == the number of potential users, according to the "Google Exec" in the press release.

$19 per user == the price the plaintiff was going to sell the product for.

Better posting on CNET

[Anonymous Coward]

CNET is also covering this at http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9976405-7.html [cnet.com]

It provides additional details, including: "And in May 2008, Google changed its user interface, breaking gMove compatibility and forcing the company to provide customer refunds."

captcha: nonzero (that's almost like LimitNone)

Re:LimitNone = :'(

[nomadic]

I find it rather ridiculous that LimitNone actually believes that an Email client migration product is such an advanced piece of software that Google with its legions of developers and mounds of cash couldn't cook one up on its own.

I didn't see anywhere in the press release where they claim that; if the press release is true, then the issue isn't whether Google couldn't cook one up on its own, but rather that they didn't--instead of that they made a deal with this company to use their product instead.

Trade secrets? What trade secrets? Google can't write a migration suite for its own email service? Geeze.

A trade secret isn't something that necessarily can't be replicated, or has to be unique, it just has to be not readily ascertainable. A typical "trade secret" would be a customer list; if I have a customer list of people who have bought my product, and you make a competing product, you can't gain access to my list through fraudulent means then use it.

This is ust another case of litigation over innovation.

No offense, but you're trying to have it both ways. It's not innovation when Google takes the idea, but when this company tries suing suddenly they're trying to squelch innovation.

I mean, I'm no IP law expert or anything, but a client migration tool? This could have easily have been some kind of open source project..who would LimitNone have sued then?

If the open source team had worked with LimitNone, agreed to help with its promotion, then turned around and released a competing version, yes, LimitNone would probably sue.

Re:Whats their contact information?

[kangman]

going through the google blog search for "limitnone" i found this blog post. http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2007/11/past-present-and-future-of-email-with.html [blogspot.com] gMOVE or "MY GRATE" (horrible name) is just an implementation of the Google Email Migration API. Hence it's open for anyone to develop their own migration tools. I really doubt that the Plaintiff's complaint that Google could NOT implement their own perhaps superior product without the knowhow of limitnone's product is legitimate. As the poster tgd states it's really a "non-obvious" idea *wink wink. It sounds like a case of quasi-developers who are trying to squeeze out all the money it can from a middling products if you can call it that.

Re:Talk about a knee jerk reaction...

[mishehu]

Even more important, how much of that $1 billion do you think they'd even win in the lawsuit? Converters for MS LookOut (Outlook) are nothing new, and I find it extremely hard to believe that there is a $1 billion market for this software.

Maybe next they should sue Mozilla because Thunderbird can convert email from Outlook...

Re:Get Rich

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually she got a total of $640,000 including cost of punitive damages. Her award for compensatory damages were reduced because, she was found partially at fault.

Honestly though, many people only take their coffee piping hot. And if every Tom, Dick, and Harry sued because something was too sharp, too hot, too cold, too blunt, too fast, too powerful, where would we be now. I should sue VW because I got a ticket for going 100mph.

I done this myself with no programming

[Anonymous Coward]

I have done this myself without any migration tool I just connected to gmail via IMAP and moved my mail from one folder to another. I did not need to move my contacts or calendar. You can just export those out vcf and ics files and import those into gmail.

Re:Get Rich

[sexconker]

Bud.
Nip it in the bud.
Before it develops.
Like a flower.
Flowering plants have buds.
Bud.

Re:Get Rich

[lena_10326]

Yes, it's a press release, but there is a real case and real filings. Before all you guys dismiss this case just because you heard it from a news wire, you ought check and see the court filings. Filed in Cook County Illinois, June 23, 2008, case number 2008-L-006828.

2008-L-006828 LIMITNONE LLC GOOGLE INC 06/23/2008
https://w3.courtlink.lexisnexis.com/cookcounty/Finddock.asp?DocketKey=CAAI0L0AAGICI0LD [lexisnexis.com]

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:LimitNone = :'(

[Free_Meson]

The article cites that LimitNone claims that the 'gMove' application was a trade secret..it wasn't even patented.

Trade secrets are very rarely patented (and the patent application would end a piece of IP's status as a trade secret as it functions as a public disclosure). Most often, trade secret protection is used on IP that is not patentable and covers any IP that derives value from its secrecy (e.g. customer lists, secret formulae, etc). Trade secret protection is implemented by securing (most often through contract) confidentiality with all who encounter the IP. If LimitNone had competent attorneys when they spoke with Google, they'll have a contract that limits Google's ability to exploit the disclosed technology even if it was unpatentably obvious. Trade secret cases like this one are fundamentally disputes over the specific contract the parties entered into, with added penalties through state trade secret laws. No attorney interested in keeping his license would file a trade secret suit over an unconditional disclosure to a competitor so there's probably (at the very least) a good faith dispute over the limits of the contract between the parties.

 

Trade secrets? What trade secrets? Google can't write a migration suite for its own email service? Geeze.

LimitNone is probably going to argue that their disclosure agreement with Google prevented Google from doing exactly that. Without seeing the contract it's impossible to know whether such an argument would be viable.

 

This is ust another case of litigation over innovation. I mean, I'm no IP law expert or anything, but a client migration tool? This could have easily have been some kind of open source project..who would LimitNone have sued then?

This case has nothing to do with innovation. If you or I had written the exact same application that Google wrote LimitNone would have no case against us.

Re:LimitNone = :'(

[danomac]

Google can't write a migration suite for its own email service? Geeze.

Nothing is stopping them from writing their own migration tool. The problem lies here (from TFA):

The lawsuit alleges that Googleâ(TM)s product, called âoeGoogle Email Uploaderâ steals gMoveâ(TM)s look, feel and functionality.

gMove would certainly be covered by copyright, what remains to be seen is if it's a direct ripoff of the existing software. If it would have been its own derived piece of software, it'd be different.

Another thing that comes to mind is who knows what their original contract said...

Re:Get Rich

[smidget2k4]

Sorry, I got them mixed up, 20% second degree, some third degree. The coffee (by McDonalds' standards) was kept between 180-190 degrees F. They have since lowered the temperature.

You can, of course, look up the facts of the case and make sure I read them correctly, but third degree burns were cited as an injury.

In fact, during testimony, one of the Doctors brought in as an expert witness stated that at just ten degrees cool, the burns would have been very mild.

Re:Get Rich

[skiingyac]

1 second exposure to 160 degree water = third degree burns:

http://www.tap-water-burn.com/ [tap-water-burn.com]

McDonald's coffee was 185 degrees:

http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm [lectlaw.com]

Re:"Don't be evil"

[General Wesc]

Slightly off-topic but it's amusing how "Don't be evil" or "Do no evil" gets touted as Google Inc.'s "core philosophy" or company motto. When in reality it's chapter 6 of their Corporate Philosophy page, titled "You can make money without doing evil" -- outlining what kind of advertising you should use.

And the preface and conclusion of their code of conduct. [google.com]

Details, details.