By now GigaOm is reporting that NetPickle founders, accused of surreptitiously developing their business plan on the dime of their previous employer, have settled the a lawsuit pending in federal court in San Jose. And PE Week already noted the availability of Lance Tokuda, NetPickle co-founder's personal blog, which detailed presumably private details, such as a term sheet from Sequoia Capital ("It's good - $3M for 28%. 10.7M post").
So far, no one has pointed out the airing of information that was supposed to be kept under tight wraps in the court documents themselves.
Among the juicier bits: Jia Shen, another of NetPickle's founders, admitted "he had Iconix's source code uploaded to" a server for Rockmyspace.com, which is owned by his new company; on May 25, "the total number of registered users at rockmyspace had jumped to 3 million — an increase of 1 million registered users in just over
7 weeks"; in January, while Shen and Tokuda were still employed at Iconix, they signed agreements transferring all intellectual property rights to NetPickle, for which they received 4 million NetPickle shares apiece; and after saddling NetPickle with a $1.5 million loan, the duo "have also entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”) with potential investors for financing that would further dilute their ownership interest in the company if a deal is executed
That information and a whole lot more, which was supposed to be kept secret under a confidentiality agreement, was divulged in electronic filings prepared by Iconix attorneys working at Morrison & Foerster. A simple cut and paste job, the same technique that's been exposing top-secret information in court cases for years now, makes the details free for the taking.
Not to be outdone, filings submitted by attorneys representing NetPickle at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, commit the same faux pas, revealing among other things that Iconix generates revenue "solely from charging sender companies to have their logos displayed."
