Corporate Bonds
Hilton
hotels recruited Starwood Hotel staff and encouraged them to raid the company
computers before they left.
According to court papers Starwood Hotel claims
that two of its former directors "directly and through other Starwood luxury
brand employees they recruited to Hilton, nicked more than 100,000 electronic
files before and after they joined Hilton".
Ross Klein and Amar Lalvani, who
had developed Starwood's W brand, used the information to develop Hilton's new
boutique brand, Denizen, which was announced just six weeks ago.
What gave
the game away was that one of the stolen files contained references to a W Hotel
concept called 'zen den'. Starwood said that it was the clearest imaginable
case of corporate espionage, theft of trade secrets, unfair competition and
computer fraud.
Hilton said that the lawsuit is without merit and will
vigorously defend itself.