Splunk alleges source code theft by former employee • The Register

Data processing company Splunk has filed a lawsuit alleging that a former employee stole its source code and used it to found a rival company.

A Splunk Complaint [PDF] names Clint Sharp, a former senior leader on Splunk’s product management team, as the play’s villain after founding a rival company called “Cribl”.

“Cribl was founded fourteen years after Splunk by a former Splunk employee, Clint Sharp,” the complaint reads, adding, “Mr. Sharp founded Cribl using code that he intentionally and unlawfully acquired from Splunk while a Splunk employee without a license or permission to do so.”

The complaint also alleges that Cribl and Sharp “recruited numerous Splunk employees to Cribl and systematically encouraged employees to take Splunk’s confidential technical and business documents.”

Splunk alleges that Cribl used stolen documents “to advance its software and disrupt Splunk’s customer relationships.”

The lawsuit also alleges that Cribl launched in 2018 and joined Splunk’s Technology Alliance Partner Program despite launching a product based on Splunk code.

Splunk didn’t realize this, but eventually realized that Cribl might not deliver the expected value for Splunk and could work against it, so it took it out of the affiliate program.

At the time of writing, Cribl’s newsroom and social channels have not contained a response to Splunk’s allegations. The registry has reached out to the company for comment and will update this story if we get a substantive response — but we’re not holding our breath because our message to Cribl’s media inquiry email address returned the error “This address may not exist.” was sent back.

Splunk’s complaint seeks an injunction to prevent Cribl’s abusive and unauthorized use of Splunk Enterprise and other Splunk software, and compensation for infringing patents and copyrights, and Cribl knew he was doing so.

Splunk has stated that it won’t issue a sanction that it could impose itself – namely blocking interoperability with Cribl – presumably because it would make Splunk’s own wares less useful for some users. ®