Amazon files suit against former manager over Google job, claims violating of non-compete contract

Zoltan Szabadi, a former manager at Amazon Web Services, is being sued by the company after accepting a job on Google’s Cloud team. Amazon claim that by accepting the new role, Szabadi violated a non-compete clause in his employment contract. It will now be up to the courts to decide whether the broad terms of the original agreement actually hold up.

At Amazon, Szabadi was responsible for managing business partnerships with third parties. When he joined Google, he was specifically blocked (by Google, not Amazon) from reaching out to any of his former contacts within six months. Amazon said that wasn’t good enough, however, and filed a lawsuit last week.

As GeekWire points out, Amazon has previously attempted to sue employees who jumped ship for Mountain View. Daniel Powers battled the company in 2012 over a similar agreement, which lead to the decision that the terms of the agreement were too stiff. The court ruled in that case that Powers would have to abide by his non-compete clause for nine months—half the time originally agreed upon by Amazon.

Rather than trying to place a time limitation on the clause in Szabadi’s case, however, Amazon is trying to block certain functions of his new job indefinitely. Whether the new approach will yield any success is now in the hands of the court. The full lawsuit is embedded below.