PHOENIX-Cellexis International Inc. filed a $525 million lawsuit in U.S. District Court charging General Telephone Electronics (GTE) Corp., several of its subsidiaries and Open Development Corp. with stealing trade secrets and using proprietary information to ruin its business.
Cellexis had earlier reported it was beginning a nationwide roll-out of a network-based prepaid cellular phone service beginning in the Phoenix and Washington, D.C. markets.
GTE is introducing a similar service based on Open Development’s platform.
Cellexis alleges that it provided proprietary and confidential information about its patent-pending technology to GTE as part of negotiations for a reseller agreement with the carrier to do business in Houston. It charges that GTE then gave that information to Open Development and funded that company’s piracy of the Cellexis system.
“An evil scheme to steal my technology was hatched after I met with GTE representatives more than two years ago,” said Douglas Fougnies, Cellexis president and chief executive officer. “This should serve as a warning to the Davids in our industry about what some of the Goliaths have up their sleeves.”
At deadline, a GTE spokesman said the company had not yet seen a copy of the lawsuit and had no comment. Executives at Open Development could not be reached.
