TPG claims win in client poaching battle against ex-staffers

Trusted Cloud, the cloud services arm of TPG Telecom, has claimed a small victory in its ongoing legal fight with a company founded by ex-staffers over alleged use of confidential business data to steal customers.

In the Federal Court this week, Trusted Cloud successfully defeated an application by Core Desktop, which was trying to claim evidence provided by the TPG subsidiary should be thrown out because it had been gained through unauthorised access to a Core Desktop server. 

As reported by CRN, the legal battle began in August last year when Trusted Cloud launched an intellectual property lawsuit against Core Desktop.

Core Desktop was registered as a business in November 2012, with a then-Trusted Cloud employee, Michael Papaconstantinou, appointed sole director and secretary.

In December that year, Papaconstantinou resigned from Trusted Cloud, and was followed by four colleagues in the following months, including Michael Amira, who had founded Trusted Cloud as Wavenet in 1998.

Trusted Cloud claims Core Desktop used confidential business information to poach as many as nine Trusted Cloud customers - such as the Melbourne Institute of Plastic Surgery (MIPS) and United Petroleum, among others - over to Core Desktop.

MIPS informed Trusted Cloud it would be terminating the partnership towards the end of July 2014, during which time it was allegedly preparing to engage Core Desktop as its new provider.

According to court documents, two weeks later Trusted Cloud discovered Core Desktop had installed super flexible file synchroniser (SFFS) software on MIPS's Trusted Cloud-run virtual servers and was copying files containing sensitive business information, the company alleged.

The SFFS was used to sync data to a server with a remote IP address that later turned out to be a Core Desktop server.

Trusted Cloud said the information taken included cost pricing, revenue, employee plans and Microsoft licence keys.

Core Desktop later admitted to installing the software in order to synch the data from the Trusted Cloud server to Core Desktop's NAS drive.

Trusted Cloud had goven Core Desktop admin details to MIPS so it could access the Trusted Cloud virtual server and install and maintain MediWiz software.

Following the filing of the lawsuit last year, Judge Katzman of the Federal Court ordered that Core Desktop be restrained from using, transmitting, disclosing or reproducing any of the copied documents.

She also ordered that the company be restrained from altering, deleting, removing or destroying any of the copied or related documents.

But Core Desktop fought back, arguing that Trusted Cloud had accessed its password-protected server without authorisation while investigating the synchronisation software, and the case should therefore be thrown out based on how the file list evidence was obtained.

Judge Katzman yesterday dismissed Core Desktop's application.

She also revised her previous orders and instructed the company to immediately hand over any documentation taken from Trusted Cloud to its own solicitors for safe keeping.

The company has until 6 March to file its defence, and Trusted Cloud's original application will be heard on 9 March.

Trusted Cloud was established in 1998 under the name Wavenet. In 2008, ASX-listed provider IntraPower acquired a 51 percent stake in the company. Wavenet was rebranded as Trusted Cloud when TPG Group acquired IntraPower in 2011.