The confidentiality agreement he signed years ago now anchors the fight against him
A former chief executive will have to answer trade-secret and contract claims after a federal court refused to throw most of the case out.
Afiniti, Inc., which sells AI tools that route calls in contact centers, sued its former chief executive and a cluster of companies it says he steered after leaving. On July 22, 2026, a federal court in Washington let most of the case move forward.
The founder ran Afiniti from 2005 until November 2021, working for years out of Washington. His time as chief executive ended, the opinion noted, following reports of an alleged sexually abusive relationship with a former employee. On his way out, Afiniti says, he kept company computers holding trade secrets, then built a network of firms in China, the Cayman Islands, Canada and Puerto Rico to sell products that, the company alleges, rely on that material. Many were staffed with former Afiniti employees.
None of that has been tested in court. The ruling decided only who stays in the case and where, not whether anyone did anything wrong.
For HR, the dispute turned on the employment agreement the executive signed in 2016. It barred him from disclosing confidential information, required him to return company property when he left, and blocked him from soliciting Afiniti's staff or customers for two years. The breach-of-contract claim, built entirely on those clauses, survived the motion to dismiss. So did the trade-secret claims.
The court also let stand a claim under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, tied to Afiniti's allegation that the former CEO reached into company systems after his employment ended. Access that ends with the job, the court said, is access "without authorization." A weaker piece fell away: Afiniti's claim that he directed current staff to pull data for him was dismissed as too vague, because the company named no employee, system or date.
Another former employee also stayed in the case. The court kept him in over a Puerto Rico meeting where, Afiniti says, he received company code by email after leaving the firm.
The offshore companies stayed too. For the limited purpose of deciding jurisdiction, the court treated several as a single enterprise and found substantial evidence that the former CEO ran one of them as a de facto executive, despite the defense describing him as an informal advisor. It stressed this was not a ruling on the merits.
Not everyone stayed. The court found it lacked jurisdiction over the founder's wife and moved her claims to Puerto Rico, and dismissed a Canadian firm without prejudice. It also struck part of Afiniti's jury-trial demand and declined to sanction the couple over disputed discovery conduct.
The litigation continues. No court has ruled on the merits.
