A SMALL STARTUP software company sued Google on Monday for allegedly having stolen its trade secrets concerning software tools for migrating Microsoft Outlook users to Gmail.

Limitnone LLC filed a lawsuit in Illinois complaining that Google deceived it into disclosing concepts and methods for converting Microsoft Outlook email, address books and calendars to Google's Gmail, then terminated their collaboration and built the software toolset itself.

The tiny five-person startup said it entered into a confidentiality agreement with Google in March 2007 to share its trade secrets with Google's engineers, salespeople and certain key prospective Google Apps customers. Limitnone said Google then told it last December that it would develop the software itself, shutting the startup out of its major business opportunity.

Limitnone claims it designed an email migration tool called "Gmove" in collaboration with Google, that Google's free "Email Uploader" that it launched earlier this year is "almost identical" to Gmove and that "both operate under a similar conceptual design." Limitnone's lead attorney David Rammelt told Reuters in a phone interview that the company's estimate of its lost revenue is "about $950 million."

The lawsuit seeks actual and punitive damages plus attorneys' fees. Google was reportedly not immediately available to comment. µ

L'Inq
Reuters