Company loses court bid to stop worker joining rival

A Bibra Lake-based environmental consultant has lost its bid to stop a former employee from joining its only local competitor over concerns about the exchange of confidential intellectual property.

The dispute arose in December last year, when senior environmental scientist James Jackson tendered his resignation with Emission Assessments to join rival Ektimo.

But the consultant claimed Mr Jackson’s actions constituted a breach of a contractual constraint, with his 2020 contract and other legal constraints preventing him from working for the company’s only WA-based competitor.

Further, Emission Assessments claimed it had evidence he had copied its confidential information without permission.

Mr Jackson rejected this and offered to relinquish any intellectual property or confidential information in his possession.

But that wasn’t enough to satisfy Emission Assessments’ concerns, who took to the Supreme Court seeking an interlocutory application in an eleventh-hour bid to stop Mr Jackson from working at Ektimo.

Among the affidavits lodged in support of the court action was one from Emission Assessments general manager Giacomo Collica, who explained the specialised nature of the work undertaken by the business and the fact that Ektimo was the only direct competitor based in Western Australia.

At the centre of the lawsuit were serious concerns about the impact Mr Jackson joining the company’s only local competitor could have on its ability to continue securing work with Alcoa of Australia - its biggest client.

According to the affidavit, Mr Jackson was recruited from Scotland in 2019 after the company had been unable to find a new employee in WA, spending about $20,000 to do so.

As the most senior person working in his particular area, Mr Collica claimed Mr Jackson had broad access to the consultant’s commercial practices, financial information, technical processes and tender documents.

While Mr Jackson did not deny that he had access to confidential information, he claimed much of his work involved utilising his own acquired skills and not the more confidential aspects of the business.

An IT report produced by the company and tendered in court as evidence indicated that Mr Jackson had copied a significant number of files on the company’s server on December 17, 2021 - the day he decided to leave the company.

According to the report, Mr Jackson had accessed those files again on January 17, 2022.

Mr Jackson strongly denied that he had misused any confidential information, claiming his last access of the documents to have been innocent and accidental

In a court judgment delivered this week, Justice Marcus Solomon believed the contract clause may go beyond that reasonably required for the protection of the Emission Assessments' interests.

Justice Solomon dismissed the interlocutory application, but Mr Jackson has provided the court with an undertaking that he will not engage in any matters concerning Alcoa and will relinquish any confidential company information in his possession.