Nike sues former designers

The fact that the corporation owns you is why I don’t want to be an employee anymore. I want to be able to speak my mind, not bite my tongue. The thought of being spied on, the fact that you are a human resource rather than a human being. Nope. I’m not interested.

I suppose the hard lesson learned here is it sounds like they tried to have it both ways - the freedom of freelance and the security of being an employee. Well…you can only pick one.

But I’m surprised that anyone would think it ok/undetectable to use their employers equipment to have conversations like that. Clever footwear designers but not at all tech savvy?

I don’t think one has to be tech savvy to behave in an ethical manor. We haven’t heard both sides of the story but even if part of this is true it reflects very badly on trust in our business. For 30 years I have designed primary packaging for the all of the major fragrance and makeup companies – all at the same time. There are several other companies that do the same and it is the accepted trust that everyone keeps their mouth shut. And we have all done this without NDA’s. The behavior of these 3 designers is very bad and there are no reasons that excuse it. I’m surprised that ADIDAS even considered getting in bed with them as this kind of behavior eventually repeats.

Actually, since you own the business, you are now “the man”. You can monitor your employees to make sure they are not stealing anything and everything from paperclips to intellectual property.

I certainly don’t know if the allegations made by Nike are true or not. It certainly wouldn’t surprise me if some executive has a bug up their ass about these three guys and wants to carry out some cruel vendetta. But we will never know because these three schmucks don’t have the resources to fight Nike. I suspect they will cya and settle with an nda. Both sides of the story won’t be known and will be sealed in court documents.

Shoenista: I work for a company that doesn’t have a human resources department:) Sometimes, you can have the best of all worlds.

I’m surprised that ADIDAS even considered getting in bed with them as this kind of behavior eventually repeats.

Yep I agree, when a design manager I never employed anyone who was willing to disclose the secrets or unlaunched product design ideas of anyone else. Perhaps Adidas was merely using them to obtain the business secrets? Who knows?

:smiley: When I was talking about security, I meant more the regular guaranteed salary and conditions that they were used to at their old employer. Going freelance, setting up a studio on your own, it’s a costly, risky leap into the unknown. I know people who hesitated for years because of this, especially those with families, mortgages, kids. Some people never do it for these reasons.

So if the lawsuit docs are true, it did sound to me as if what was desired was a freelance business with full autonomy, but with the security - i.e. the kind of salary and conditions they were used to and the only way they could do this was to get fully into bed with the arch enemy of their last employer. A risky strategy as we can see.

If only the best and brightest get access to this Area 51 of Nike, why did they give it to these 3 Benedict Arnolds? Maybe they need a better filter. Or maybe the things they stole weren’t that valuable…

It just keeps getting more interesting !!

How do you know that these guys are guilty? From Dan’s link,

“Dekovic, Dolce and Miner, through their attorneys, have made individual written statements acknowledging they had talks with Adidas officials before leaving Nike but denying having done any Brooklyn Design Studio work yet. Each designer also acknowledges having left the company with examples of Nike work but describes that work as being “ancient history” by the time the studio gets started. Each denies attempting to recruit other Nike employees to work in the studio, which also would be in violation of the noncompete agreements.”

It appears on the surface that these designers are being played by the lawyers…

Attorneys need mules to commit crimes in order to generate billable hours. The designers were given assurances that they would be protected legally before they even left Nike. This is how attorneys pull the puppet strings to generate work for themselves.

Dekovic, Dolce, Miner are the puppets. Gibson Dunn and Crutcher LLP, Stoel Rives LLP are the puppet masters.

I think any judge hearing this case would want to know the digital communications records of the law firms involved leading up to the filing of this case.

Dumb designers…

I have a hard time buying the “lawyers framing 3 designers” to make some money for the holidays. If they are internal lawyers, they are more likely salaried, and if it is an external legal firm, than someone at Nike would have had to come to them with sufficient suspicion to raise the charges.

Either way, digital forensics don’t lie. If they scrubbed the hard drives and found e-mail evidence that had been deleted, that alone is probably the death knell.

They’re innocent until proven guilty, but I can’t imagine them starting this big of a shit storm in such a small industry if they didn’t think it was over something important.

Me too. 23 years in the footwear trade now. In my experience you don’t breach your non compete, you don’t scheme about how you might breach your non compete or figure out ways of other people to pick the bits up and pay for it. So if you resign you suck up that one year non compete, it’s what you agreed to. Other people manage to do it. I’ve done it, I’m sure other members of this board have done it too. Some of the digital communication to do with breaching this non compete is online now. Some of the conversations.

And I can’t think of any company I’ve ever worked for beginning a court case for fun or to ‘get back’ at someone - unless it was to do with knocking off, sometimes then, hardball was played. I’ve worked for two bosses who were taken to court for insider trading, serious stuff. When I worked in soccer, a new soccer kit was stolen out of the cupboard next to my desk (by the cleaner) and sold to The Sun (national UK newspaper), so I know how seriously corporations take this. I had the training as an employee, we were not to use email for certain confidential conversations, for instance.

Usually if you breached your non compete you were out on your ear, the same day. Has happened to people I’ve worked with. Doesn’t matter how many fanboi think you’re some sort of God, you are still a human resource, an employee and if you sign a contract then you respect what it says.

From the news links about this story, it appears the three Nike designers have been hoisted on their own petard.

At my previous job in a big firm they drilled into employees everything you do could be recorded and to treat every correspondence as if one day it would be reported in the paper. That doesn’t stop people being indelicate however. I’ve seen lots of senior management have to make a grovellling apology after hitting reply-all by accident.

I’ve also investigated fraud, petty theft, email misuse etc. at work. In most cases the perpetrators are not master criminals and might as well have worn a tshirt to work with “I am defrauding the company” written on it.

Any time anyone leaves a job for another they take with them intellectual property. It may not be files or prototypes, but depending on the industry & level of responsibility, it can be just as valuable if not more: knowledge of strategy, pipeline, or even process. I am just amazed that the accused would use company tech to have such conversations or allegedly swipe files. As already mentioned by many, all that stuff can be traced. You gotta be smart.

Surface Phil:
As already mentioned by many, all that stuff can be traced. You gotta be smart.

Are you insinuating that this behavior is OK if you smart enough to avoid being caught? I hope not. Many employees leave a job with proprietary information. Ethics should preclude offering it to the new employer and an ethical employer /competitor wouldn’t be colluding to get it.

While it never got to court, one of my previous employers accused me of absolutely trumped up charges. They got real huffy when my clients decided to follow me.

I have also seen bosses absolutely trash talk previous employees when in reality it was only a personality conflict at the root cause.

I’m not saying these three designers are innocent, I don’t know. But to absolve management of over-reach is ridiculous. They are the ones with the power and resources to make someone’s life miserable. The employees not nearly as much.

Of course not. Just that this happens all the time. If you are blatantly going about it (as implied in this case) then it is not a question of if you are going to get in hot water, but when.

Holy crap, I need to ask for a raise.

and on the destroying the evidence tip, my boss from my soccer boot designing days has today been sentenced to four years for a £1million fraud.
He was caught because the engineer he employed to destroy the evidence - I.e. They asked him to wipe Incriminating emails related to that fraud - became concerned and contacted the serious fraud office.
Seems there’s a lot of it about!

An update on the adidas Brooklyn office;