Facts

Lynwood Investments Cy Limited is a Cyprus limited liability company. Lynwood filed suit in the Northern District of California against Maxim Konovaloc, Igor Syoev, Andrey Alexeev, Maxim Dounin, Gleb Smirnoff, Angus Robertson, NGINX Inc., NGINX Software Inc., BV NGINX LLC, Runa Capital Inc., E.venture Capital Partners II LLC, and F5 Networks Inc.

PLAINTIFF'S CONTENTIONS: The plaintiff contended that it was the assignee of all rights and interests of Rambler Internet Holding LLC, which it contended was one of the larges media companies and web portals in Russia; that three of the individual defendants were employed by Rambler as software programmers; that while employed there, they developed an open source web server software known as Open Source NGINX, which was used for solving issues related to handling large volumes of web server traffic; that the individual software programmers agreed to start their own company in San Francisco to commercialize a proprietary version of NGINX and associated extensions; and that they orchestrated their resignations from Rambler and secured venture funding from other defendants. The plaintiff contended that the individual defendants and NGINX entered into a merger agreement to sell their products for $670 million to F5. The plaintiff contended that Rambler was the owner of the NGINX software and the associated opportunities that were created while the programmers worked at Rambler. The plaintiff asserted causes of action for breach of employment obligations; aiding and abetting employees' fraud and breaches of their duties of honesty and loyalty to Rambler; tortious interference with contract; tortious interference with prospective business advantage; fraud; trademark infringement; and copyright infringement.

DEFENDANTS' CONTENTIONS: The defendants denied any wrongdoing or liability and moved to dismiss based on statute of limitations, failure to satisfy FRCP 9(b), and failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted.

Result

The court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss without leave to amend and subsequently awarded F5 defendants $804,623.33 in attorney's fees and the individual defendants $583,291.96 in attorney's fees.