Amazon Files Lawsuit Against Former Employee

There’s fighting to retain critical talent in the increasingly competitive cloud computing market, and then there’s this story out of Amazon Web Services (AWS). The public cloud company is taking a former employee to court over what it stated is a violation of a non-compete agreement the employee signed when the joined the company.

Zoltan Szabadi, a former strategic partnerships manager at AWS, allegedly signed a non-compete clause that prevented him from soliciting business from customers he dealt with at AWS for a period of 18 months after departing the company. According to his LinkedIn profile, Szabadi joined Amazon in July 2008 and left the company in April of this year.

Apparently he left to join Google (GOOG) as a reseller ecosystem lead for the Google Cloud Platform. Szabadi lists his start date for his new job as May 2014. According to CNET, Szabadi told Amazon via his lawyer that he had signed a six-month agreement with Google in which he promised not to do business with any Amazon customers he had “material direct contact” with or that he has “confidential information” about.

Amazon obviously isn’t satisfied with that promise and claims Szabadi’s new role at Google is comparable to the job he had during his last four years working for AWS.

Google plans to fight the lawsuit, so this may very well play out in the courts.

This isn’t the first time Amazon has attempted to take former employees to court for jumping ship to join a competitor. And last time, the former employee went to work for Google. The lawsuit against its former vice president of cloud sales over an alleged breach over a non-compete agreement ended up being mostly thrown out by a judge.