Hershey accuses former health snack chief of trade secret theft
Confectionery group The Hershey Company has taken the former president of its healthy snack brand Amplify to court over the alleged theft of trade secrets.
In a suit filed on Monday, January 27 at the US District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Hershey claimed that Doug Behrens had “orchestrated a secret plan to steal some of Hershey’s most sensitive trade secret and confidential business information and hide his tracks after doing so”.
Hershey added: “He got caught. Nevertheless, Behrens refuses to repay to Hershey a single cent of the hundreds of thousands of dollars he owes to it under multiple contracts. Accordingly, Hershey has no choice but to file this action.”
Behrens previously served as president of Amplify between May 2018 and August 2019 and, according to the complaint, collected more than $1.5 million in compensation during that time before leaving to join rival healthy snack brand Kind.
“At the time that he resigned (or shortly thereafter), Behrens knew that he would be jumping ship to join Kind, which is also a healthy snack brand. Behrens, however, hid that fact from Hershey: he professed to be unsure about his future plans even when Hershey directly asked him what those plans were and if they involved Kind. Now, Hershey knows why Behrens played dumb,” alleged the claim.
In the 30-day period between his resignation and last day of work, Behrens reportedly sent more than 100 Hershey documents from his work email account to his personal account.
The trade secrets include PowerPoint presentations on company strategy, marketing research, a list of Amplify’s customers and information about their preferences, and a “comprehensive snapshot” of the corporate organisation chart for a “critical” Amplify customer, said the complaint.
“What is worse, Hershey does not know the full extent of Behrens’s misconduct and what other information he may have taken,” added the confectionery company.
Just days before the end of his employment, Behrens allegedly re-installed the Windows operating system on his Amplify laptop, thereby wiping all the data from the laptop.
The suit, which accused Behrens of breaching his contract by stealing the trade secrets, also claimed that the former president has failed to pay back a $250,000 signing bonus and shares in the company that he reportedly owes after breaching his contract.
Hershey is now seeking repayment of the signing bonus and the cash equivalent of 2,392 shares of Hershey stock.
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