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Jump Trading has sued a former employee, claiming he stole the crypto firm’s intellectual property to help start a rival blockchain company.
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Crypto firm Jump Trading has sued a former software engineer, accusing him of violating non-competition obligations and stealing intellectual property to help start a competing business.
In a Jan. 21 complaint filed in a Chicago federal court, Jump claimed its former employee, Liam Heeger, violated a non-compete obligation of his contract by running a “competitive business” that “directly competes with Jump.”
Jump said that Heeger worked as one of the lead software engineers on Firedancer, a “major blockchain project” at the firm, and helped analyze, design, write, and optimize blockchain code from February 2023 up until his resignation on Nov. 11, 2024.
In a Jan. 22 X post, under the handle Cantelopepeel, Heeger said he left Firedancer to found Unto Labs, which would work on creating a “next generation layer-1 blockchain.”
Source: Liam Heeger
Jump alleged Heeger “both developed and had considerable access to highly sensitive confidential and/or proprietary information, including knowledge and information on business plans and strategies, blockchain models, unreleased codebases, and software tools.”
“Jump’s ability to run its business profitably in the blockchain space depends on its ability to keep its intellectual property — including strategies, proprietary data, research, and technology — confidential,” it added.
Information for Heeger’s lawyers was not immediately available at the time of writing. Heeger and Unto Labs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jump accused Heeger of starting work on the venture while still an employee and claimed he was “exploiting Jump’s confidential information, including “intellectual property he created while an employee of Jump, for the benefit of this new enterprise and to the detriment of Jump.”
The firm claimed Heeger secured $3 million in funding at a $50 million valuation within one month of his resignation and alleged he met with venture capital firms to raise funds for the new business at the Breakpoint conference in Singapore while still working for Jump.
Jump Trading has accused a former employee of violating non-competition obligations and stealing intellectual property. Source: PACER
Jump claimed Heeger revealed information to a former Jump college after his resignation and told his former supervisor that he would no longer comply with the non-competition agreement because he had moved to California, where the laws differ from Illinois.
Related: Jump Trading accused of crypto ‘pump and dump’ in game dev’s suit
The company asked the court to enforce the terms of the non-competition agreement for the contractually dictated two years and prevent anyone from working with Heeger on the new venture that might violate the terms.
Jump also asked to court to order Heeger to return any of the firm’s intellectual property he may still have.
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This article first appeared at Cointelegraph.com News
