Yahoo Sued For Unfair Competition, Theft Of Trade Secrets

Yahoo is being sued for unfair competition and theft of trade secrets by Nuance Communications. Nuance, a Menlo Park maker of speech-recognition software, is claiming that Yahoo has raided' 13 of their 14 research and development engineers.

According to Nuance, the engineers were working on a project which would enable people to conduct Internet searches over the telephone. Users would speak their query into a telephone rather than typing it on a keyboard. Nuance said that the project, which was about 75% complete, would ultimately lead to technology that they would sell to companies like Yahoo.

The lawsuit was filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court against both Yahoo and the defecting engineers. Nuance is seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to keep the engineers from working with Yahoo on the same project.