Nuance Communications has sued Yahoo, claiming theft of trade secrets and unfair competition.
13 could be an unlucky number for Yahoo, as Menlo Park, CA-based Nuance believes that number of its engineers who joined Yahoo were unlawfully taken. Worse, the company thinks Yahoo has stolen its speech recognition technology.
The Mercury News has reported Nuance filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court, seeking to block their working for Yahoo. Nuance VP of R&D Larry Heck bolted for Yahoo at the end of August; other engineers in California and in Montreal followed them.
Yahoo has been a licensor of some of Nuance’s technology, the report notes. Premium users of Yahoo Mail have been utilizing it when using a phone to access email. In the lawsuit, Nuance claims Yahoo has now found it easier to “raid Nuance’s R&D staff, so as to acquire and control it, rather than purchase a valid license for Nuance’s technology.”
That technology recognizes some 25 million words, and its ability to quickly match spoken words to those in its database is Nuance’s crown jewel. It led ScanSoft, which makes the popular Dragon NaturallySpeaking and IBM ViaVoice products, to merge with Nuance; the merger completed on September 15th.
Now the relationship has changed with the lawsuit filing. Yahoo has delivered a rebuttal to the court, which was sealed. The only comment Yahoo offered was via a statement: “We believe the claims in the lawsuit are without merit and plan to defend ourselves vigorously.”
Already, some details about the inner machinations behind the movement of engineering talent to Yahoo have come to light. The article notes how Nuance claims Mr. Heck contacted Yahoo after he “began agitating for more authority” and was denied a request for a higher position after the ScanSoft merger:
” the combined company denied his request to be named chief technology officer.
Meanwhile, Heck swapped e-mails with Yahoo about joining its team. The suit says Heck then e-mailed himself his own rsum, a list of Nuance employees to potentially bring to Yahoo, and a proposed organizational plan for an R&D department.
On Aug. 30, Heck announced he was quitting Nuance to work at Yahoo. So did one of his key managers.
David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
