Yahoo! hit with speech tech theft lawsuit

A California court has temporarily barred about a dozen engineers hired by Yahoo! from working on interactive speech technology at the search engine after the company they recently left filed a lawsuit accusing Yahoo! of trying to steal trade secrets.

A Santa Clara County Superior Court order issued on Wednesday said speech technology company Nuance Communications was likely to prevail on the merits of the case regarding misappropriation of trade secrets and unfair competition, among other claims. The order also said Nuance would suffer "great and irreparable injury" if the employees were not blocked from doing work on speech technology at Yahoo!.

Yahoo! was also barred temporarily from employing any former or current Nuance employees to work on such technology. Nuance makes the technology behind many airlines' automated voice interactive flight information systems.

In court documents, Nuance alleges that Yahoo! "gutted" its research and development unit and poached 13 of its engineers. Nuance also alleges that its former vice president of R&D, Larry Heck, helped Yahoo! hire a dozen of his engineering staff.

A Yahoo! spokeswoman said: "We think the complaint is completely without merit and we are going to defend ourselves vigorously." She declined to offer further comment. Heck could not be reached for comment.

Menlo Park, California-based Nuance alleges that the engineers were at a stage where at least 75 per cent of the work on a major project had been done when Heck left to work for Santa Clara, California-based Yahoo!. Nuance planned to sell the technology to Yahoo! and other internet companies who want to offer voice-activated search and directory services to telephone users.

Nuance did not return a call seeking comment, and a lawyer for the company declined to comment beyond what was in the court documents.

Yahoo!'s main rival, Google, has also been accused of poaching a key executive from Microsoft in a high-profile lawsuit. Microsoft sued Google and the executive, Kai-Fu Lee, arguing that his setting up Google's China development centre would violate a non-compete agreement he signed with Microsoft. Microsoft offered to settle the case with Google after a judge restricted the work activities Lee could do until the case is resolved.

Elinor Mills writes for CNET News.com