Google vs. PayPal

     According to this article, it looks as though Google is wrapped up in a legal battle, this time with another large online company, PayPal.  PayPal is an online business that allows and facilitates money transfers from one party to another over the internet.  They are suing Google, claiming that Google misappropriated trade secrets of PayPal's.  PayPal claims that a former employee, now working with Google, took confidential with him.  Osama Bedier is a former PayPal executive who when he left PayPal, got hired by Google and supposedly provided them with information about PayPal's mobile-payment business.  Bedier is now the Vice President of Payments at Google and was a leader for Google in developing the Google Wallet, the very application PayPal believes they stole trade secrets for.
     PayPal is also claiming that another one of its former executives, Stephanie Tilenius, was a part of the misappropriation and also took trade secrets with her to her.  Tilenius is now the Vice President of Commerce.
     This whole situation does not look good for Google.  Without knowing too many details about each companies applications, it seems to be more than a coincidence that two PayPal executives left them, got hired by Google, and Google comes out with an extremely similar product to what PayPal was working on.  They thing I don't understand is how they go about proving something like this.  I guess they could search Bedier and Tilenius's hard drives, but I am not sure what that would prove.  It they did have documents on personal computers, they might be in trouble with PayPal, but how does that hurt Google.  It seems as though there would need to be hard evidence against Google to get them in actual trouble for anything.  The whole thing is a pretty sketchy situation.

Balaban, Dan. "PayPal Vs. Google Suit Reveals Rivalry Over Expected M-Payments Bonanza." NFC Times. 27 May 2011. Web. 29 Feb. 2012. <http://www.nfctimes.com/news/paypal-vs-google-suit-reveals-rivalry-over-expected-m-payments-bonanza>.