DePuy Synthes is suing two former sales representatives for breech of contract after they left for a rival company, industry blog massdevice.com reports. DePuy alleges that former employees Michael Jones and Jacob Schools broke contract provisions on employee secrecy, intellectual property, non-competition and non-solicitation. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia. Jones resigned in November and Smalls in December of last year, MassDevice reports that court documents show. Jones told DePuy he would be working for a Globus Medical distributor but did not answer further inquiries on the identity of the distributor or the details of his new job, the documents allege. Schools claimed he was leaving the spinal implant business for software development, according to the documents. Both took employment with Globus distributor Sky Surgical. DePuy claims that both men have been servicing the same accounts that they had for DePuy. DePuy has asked that the court prevent the men from working for Sky or other competitor until 2014 and has requested the return of any confidential information they still hold. The lawsuit also seeks compensatory damages of $1 million from Jones, Schools and Sky Surgical, as well as punitive damages of $350,000 from Sky.
