Standing Up For What's Right
In Silicon Valley we fight for what we believe in. Today we are fighting a battle for fair-market competition and employee rights against a much larger organization in Citrix.We do not stand for corporate bullying and we do not stand for large companies dictating the future for startups or its employees. We will continue the pursuit of offering gainful employment to talented men and women all over the world!In regards to this case, here is an official statement from Egnyte CEO Vineet Jain:"Egnyte is a growing business and we have historically invested in regions outside of Silicon Valley for a myriad of reasons - access to talent, cost profiles, market opportunity. Egnyte’s recent expansion plans took us to Raleigh, North Carolina, where we had the privilege of engaging a number of young, talented sales and service professionals, some of which had previously worked for the ShareFile division of Citrix, which is in the process of massive layoffs both in Raleigh and elsewhere around the country.Unfortunately, those expansion plans are being challenged by Citrix, which has decided to resort to legal maneuvering in order to prevent their former employees from obtaining gainful employment with Egnyte. In particular, Citrix is seeking to enforce overly broad and antiquated (in most states) non-compete agreements that do not reflect the spirit of fair and healthy market competition in the modern business world.In an effort to protect its new employees and its business, Egnyte and the affected Egnyte employees have brought an action against Citrix in Santa Clara, California, where both Egnyte and Citrix have their U.S. headquarters’, seeking a determination that Citrix’s actions are both unfair and improper business practices. Concurrently, Egnyte reached out to Citrix in hopes of creating a dialogue that would lead to a de-escalation of the matter. However, rather than respond to Egnyte’s good faith offers, Citrix thereafter sued the seven impacted employees and Egnyte, in a second-filed Florida lawsuit, in an effort to prevent their former employees from continuing their new employment opportunity with our company, on the grounds that we are attempting to obtain intellectual property from their former employer.Egnyte has already established itself as one of the leading companies in our market, thanks to a very strong, award-winning product that we have built over the years. We have no interest in obtaining any information from Citrix regarding their company, their products, or any other intellectual property. Egnyte even offered to work with Citrix to ensure that Citrix’s information, if any, was protected, but Citrix refused our offers. This indicates to us that Citrix is not trying to protect any of its intellectual property, but rather, is trying to punitively attack its former employees who have been terminated, or who have seen the writing on the wall and are leaving before they get laid off.We find that Citrix’s direct attack against these upstanding young professionals, and us as a competitor, is both shocking and deplorable. As a ten year old, private technology company in Silicon Valley, we have always respected the importance of protecting ours, as well as others, intellectual property. This is not a matter of Citrix protecting its intellectual property, rather a modern-day example of corporate bullying, which we will not stand for.As we have shown in recent years with our expansion to regions like Spokane, Washington and Poznan, Poland, we want to bring more jobs to areas outside of Silicon Valley. The actions taken by Citrix not only attempts to impede us from doing so, but they set a terrible precedent that could have a chilling effect on other smaller companies as they attempt to grow their business. Furthermore, their actions are attempting to take away gainful employment opportunities from young, talented men and women who deserve the right to work and support their families.Unfortunately, these are the types of issues that have stopped smaller businesses from having a fair opportunity to compete in larger markets and today we are taking a stand. We are not just protecting our business and our employees, but we are making a general statement to the corporate world that this type of unfair business practice and corporate bullying will no longer be tolerated.We are very confident that the legal system will do the right thing in this case and that justice will prevail, protecting the integrity of business for Egnyte and the thousands of other companies just like us across the United States."
