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"In the midst of a mass employee exodus, Zynga is suing the former head of its CityVille game for stealing its ideas.\nThe embattled online company filed a complaint in a San Francisco Court last Friday, accusing Alan Patmore of \"misappropriation of trade secrets\" and \"breach of written contract.\" Patmore, who was CityVille's general manager, joined Zynga last year. He recently left to be vice-president of product for competitor Kixeye, All Things D reports. As the number-one game on Facebook based on monthly average users, CityVille is among Zynga's most popular games, according to its website. \n\"Zynga respects the rights of its employees to resign and seek employment with other companies. But what Zynga cannot tolerate is the wholesale theft of some of its most sensitive and commercially valuable data,\" the company's attorneys write. \"Zynga has no choice but to bring this lawsuit to recover its stolen data and to ensure no use is made of it.\"\nThe 14-page court document then goes on to accuse Patmore of taking 760 files from Zynga \u2014 including unreleased game design documents and confidential revenue information \u2014 and later attempting to \"cover his tracks.\"\nZynga also takes a jab at Kixeye, describing it as \"a social gaming company that ranks 34th in the industry\" and \"who has publicly expressed animus towards industry-leader Zynga.\"\nThe data that Zynga claims Patmore stole could give rivals such as Kixeye a competitive edge, the document says.\n\"[It] could be used to improve a competitor's internal understanding and know-how of core game mechanics and monetization techniques, its execution, and ultimately its market standing to compete more effectively with Zynga.\"\nThe San Francisco-based firm is no stranger to legal battles. In August, Electronic Arts sued Zynga over striking similarities between The Ville and EA's The Sims Social.\nZynga and Kixeye did not immediately respond to requests for comment.\nUPDATE: Kixeye tells Mashable that it \"has nothing to do with the suit.\"\"Unfortunately, this appears to be Zynga's new employee retention strategy: Suing former employees to scare current employees into staying,\" spokesman Bryan Lam says in an email. \"They've clearly exhausted other options in their employee retention playbook.\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2012/10/16/zynga-sue-cityville/>