AUSTIN - A company that specializes in streaming content wants to keep how it goes about doing so from being streamed to the public.
The world has changed. Companies must rely on video conferencing to do business, as do courthouses across the nation, which have essentially become digital justice centers conducting hearings and even jury trials virtually.
And while the pandemic has changed how the world does business, some things remain business as usual, such as litigants wanting to keep their business sealed away from the public.
Court records show on Oct. 6 FloSports, a subscription video streaming service, filed a motion to seal in a lawsuit it brought against a "competitive platform," Rokfin Inc., along with a former employee who now apparently works for Rokfin, Willie Saylor.
Sealing motions are commonplace, but FloSports’ motion comes with a new twist, as the company wants to keep its trade secrets from being streamed on Zoom and YouTube.
Seeking more than $1 million in damages, FloSports filed suit against Rokfin and Saylor last November, alleging breach of noncompetition agreement and tortious interference.
According to the lawsuit, Saylor was “a key FloSports employee” producing “valuable” wrestling content. When he quit, he removed content from FloSports’ server and immediately uploaded the content to Rokfin, an act that “blatantly” violated his one-year noncompete agreement.
However, Rokin and Saylor’s response to FloSports’ sealing motion, which was filed today, argues the lawsuit was brought for different reasons.
“This lawsuit is a pretext,” the response states. “Whereas Plaintiff FloSports would have this Court believe that this lawsuit is a colossal effort to restrain Defendant Willie Saylor from writing about amateur wrestling, it is really a pernicious weaponization of the litigation process to inflict as much harm as possible on Rokfin and its CEO, Martin Floreani.”
Floreani co-founded FloSports and was its CEO before being “forced out” in early 2018. In 2019, Floreani founded Rokfin, and “this lawsuit is simply FloSports’ deliberate effort to drain” Floreani as part of a “misguided fear” that Rokfin represents a threat to FloSports, the response states.
“The Motion, especially coupled with the not-so-subtle threat of a mandamus to avoid trial in the hopes of extending the restrictive covenants beyond the year after Defendant Saylor left FloSports, is yet another feather in FloSports’ cap—further success in depleting the small start up of scarce resources in the form of legal fees expended in responding to the Motion and preparing for the hearing,” the response states.
“The Court must now spend time hearing argument on largely premature requests to seal and prohibit livestreaming of evidence that FloSports has failed to carry its burden of identifying with reasonable and sufficient particularity for the Court to rule before trial.”
Rokfin is asking the court to defer any ruling sealing and prohibiting the public streaming of FloSports’ content until the issues are ripe for ruling at trial.
A hearing on the matter has been slated for Oct. 20.
Rokfin is represented in part by attorney Scott Brutocao of Cornell Smith Mierl Brutocao Burton.
Burgess Law represents FloSports.
Travis County District Court case No. D-1-GN-19-008278