A small social networking software company filed a lawsuit against Google, claiming that much of the source code behind Orkut.com, the search engine’s popular social service, was stolen by a former engineer.
In its lawsuit, Affinity Engines, based in Palo Alto, California, said engineer Orkut Buyukkokten illegally took the code he had written for the company – which he co-founded – with him when he joined Google. Affinity Engines also claimed that Buyukkokten promised Affinity Engines that he wouldn’t develop a competing social network service for Goog le. Affinity Engines, which filed the claim on May 25 in Santa Clara Superior Court, is seeking unspecified damages and royalties.
This looks pretty simple (The Wired article links to information about the court filings, but not the documents themselves). I think Mr Buyukkokten is going to be looking for a new job soon, and given Google’s mid-IPO status, I betcha there’s going to be some money laid out, or even a simple purchase of Affinity Engines in the future.