Start-up that scanned 800 miles of underground pipes and conduits in Cambridge sues former programmers it says stole and destroyed its data

A Boston-based startup that says it tin revolutionize the mode engineers tin find retired what's sitting underground earlier they statesman ample operation projects says it archetypal has to excavation itself retired of the messiness near by immoderate programmers it had hired who allegedly not lone stole the company's ideas and information but destroyed the accusation earlier they near to commencement a competing company.

Prezerv Technologies, connected Oliver Street downtown, says it hired the programmers to physique AI systems to rapidly physique close underground maps based connected ground-penetrating radar. Civil engineers often usage radar to fig retired what pipes and different structures are buried nether the onshore connected which they privation to enactment caller bridges oregon roads, but existent technologies for uncovering imaginable underground obstacles are dilatory and taxable to interpretation. To bid the bundle the programmers were building, Prezerv says it paid to person different institution bash immoderate 800 miles worthy of ground-penetrating radar scans of what lies beneath the streets successful Cambridge.

But successful a suit primitively filed successful Suffolk Superior Court, Prezerv, founded by Cambiz Raufi, says the 3 programmers not lone absconded with the information and assorted concern plans and contracts, but past went into the assorted repositories connected which the institution was storing its information and programming - including IBM and Google unreality servers, the Github open-source repository and a institution Slack transmission - to scrub the accusation truthful that they could get to marketplace archetypal with the competing solution they're present marketing.

In the suit, which the programmers had shifted to national tribunal this week, due to the fact that they don't unrecorded successful Massachusetts, Prezerv says the programmers did sizeable damage, but that they were besides beauteous sloppy, which made it comparatively casual to find impervious of their misdeeds. In 1 case, they near information they thought they'd destroyed successful the recycle bin of a laptop they yet returned to the company. And galore of their selling and pitch-deck slides not lone transcript Prezerv images exactly, successful immoderate cases, they forgot to instrumentality the sanction "Prezerv" disconnected them, the institution alleges, adding immoderate besides notation a circumstantial statement the institution had signed with an Italian road-construction company.

Prezerv is asking a justice to bid the programmers to halt what they're doing, instrumentality each the purloined information and documents to Prezerve and to wage treble oregon treble damages and attorney's and tribunal fees.

Complete complaint (1.9M PDF).