Wal-Mart Stores Inc says it has a smoking gun which proves that Amazon.com Inc executives – including Richard Dalzell, formerly of Wal-Mart IT and now Amazon’s CIO – have wrongfully removed confidential Wal-Mart documents. Many of these documents contain the very trade secrets that Wal-Mart seeks to protect by this litigation lawyers explained in a document filed with King County Superior Court on March 12 1999.
Last October, Wal-Mart sued Amazon, its venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers and their joint investment vehicle Drugstore.com. Wal-Mart believes Amazon hired Dalzell and others to steal Wal-Mart’s datawarehousing technology for use in Drugstore.com. Now Wal-Mart also claims that Amazon’s recent partnership with Dell Computer Corp is not as innocent as it seems.
As well as co-branding, the deal may involve components of datawarehousing technology, which is the very subject of Wal- Mart’s trade secrets case the filing explains. Dell may unwittingly be facilitating Amazon’s improper misappropriation of Wal-Mart trade secrets, Wal-Mart’s lawyers wrote.
