Crocs filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado against Joybees, accusing the company and its chief executive of unfair competition. The filing came a day after Joybees filed claims with the Colorado Court against Crocs.
According to Reuters, Crocs’ lawsuit, an expansion of a separate lawsuit the company filed in 2021, accuses Joybees and its CEO Kellen McCarvel of stealing trade secrets.
The new complaint accuses McCarvel, a mid-level manager at Crocs, of stealing thousands of documents containing Crocs’s proprietary business information and the contents of a Crocs e-mail account before launching Joybees in 2020.
In its counterclaim, Joybees charged Crocs with anti-competitive behavior, alleging that the company wants to monopolize the market for “injection-molded clogs,” violating U.S. and state antitrust laws with consumers.
Joybees alleged Crocs abused its monopoly power through “exclusive and conditional dealings” that had cost Joybees more than $1.6 million in annual revenue.
On Friday, Crocs told Fox Business it would “protect and defend its intellectual property and proprietary information against third-party theft and abuse.”
