“Defendants repeatedly accessed the Lemonade app and Lemonade website without authorisation and in violation of the terms of service, copying and extracting the content and arrangement of the app, and incorporating that material into what ultimately would become an application for home and liability insurance offered by ONE.”
These are among the allegations put forward by insurtech Lemonade as it takes ONE Insurance, parent firm wefox Group, and wefox founder Julian Teicke to court. The above is an excerpt from the complaint filed in New York by Lemonade, which accuses the defendants not only of copyright infringement but also breach of contract and violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Lemonade co-founder and chief executive Daniel Schreiber revealed the lawsuit in a post he published on LinkedIn.
“It catalogues how wefox's founders used aliases and bogus addresses to create phony Lemonade policies and initiate fictitious claims,” said Schreiber. “It logs how, over dozens of sessions, they methodically reverse-engineered Lemonade, and then used the bootlegged IP to create apps, websites, and products that are facsimiles of Lemonade.”
According to the complaint, Lemonade sent cease and desist letters to the defendants on two occasions – last year and earlier this month.
“This didn’t have to end in court,” continued Schreiber in his post. “In August we discreetly asked them to stop. Instead, they continued probing our servers, triggering a second letter, which they ignored.”
The insurtech CEO added that proceeds of the lawsuit will go to Code.org.
“We believe in the tech revolution insurance is experiencing, and alongside many others, work hard to ensure regulators, investors, and the public believe in the integrity of these innovations,” he said. “That’s why we hold ourselves to strict legal and ethical standards, and it’s why we call out those who do not.”
