Hilton Worldwide has lost its bid to dismiss a lawsuit by rival hotel operator Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide that accused it and two former Starwood executives of stealing trade secrets.
Reuters reports that a U.S. District Judge this week ruled that Starwood had presented sufficient evidence to allow the case against Hilton, which is owned by private equity firm Blackstone Group, to go forward.
Starwood had sued Hilton in April 2009, accusing Klein and Lalvani of working to develop a new Hilton hotel line called Denizen, using confidential information from Starwood.
Starwood said the executives, Ross Klein and Amar Lalvani, who were in charge of developing its luxury hotels before jumping to Hilton in 2008, accessed its computer systems and files without authorisation, and stole hundreds of thousands of documents with confidential information.
Hilton had sought to dismiss the case on jurisdictional grounds.
It sought to have all of Starwood’s claims be settled through arbitration, but the judge retained jurisdiction on two of the claims.
