Mars Accuses Pret Panera of Using ‘Stolen’ Corporate Files

(Bloomberg) -- Mars Inc. sued sandwich and coffee chain Pret Panera Holding and its owner JAB Holding Co. for allegedly gaining illegal access to thousands of valuable corporate documents that the candy maker claims were stolen by a former executive.

Longtime Mars employee Jacek Szarzynski purloined detailed global financial projections, secret documents on acquisition opportunities and results for individual products before joining JAB last year as a lead operating partner, according to a trade-secrets lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in Washington.

JAB last year named Szarzynski as chief financial officer and chief operating officer for its newly formed Pret Panera unit, which owns Panera Bread restaurants, Pret A Manager sandwich shows and Caribou Coffee Co., according to the filing. JAB has been on a buying spree, snapping up coffee and fast-food brands in a challenge to Nestle SA and Starbucks Corp.

At Mars, which makes products including M&Ms candies, Snickers bars, Uncle Ben’s rice and Pedigree dog food, Szarzynski held leadership roles in the pet-care, food and drinks businesses.

“The lawsuit is completely without legal merit,” Tom Johnson, a spokesman for JAB, said in an emailed statement. “JAB has already extensively investigated the allegations through its outside counsel, Debevoise & Plimpton, and concluded that neither JAB nor Pret Panera has used or benefited in any way from any Mars information.”

Court Order

Mars seeks a court order barring JAB and Pret Panera from using any of the allegedly stolen information and forcing the companies to purge the files from their systems. Mars is also seeking unspecified damages and disgorgement of profits derived from allegedly stolen information.

“We tried to resolve this issue amicably, but unfortunately we were unable to do so,” Mars General Counsel Stefanie Straub said in an emailed statement. Mars sued “to protect our intellectual property,” she said.

Szarzynski, who started working at Mars in the mid-1990s, is a Polish national who lives in Belgium and regularly travels to Washington, where Pret Panera is based, according to the complaint. Mars said it wasn’t concerned when Szarzynski announced his departure because at the time he was working in the company’s pet-care unit, which didn’t compete with JAB.

But McLean, Virginia-based Mars claims Szarzynski met repeatedly with JAB executives around the time he was allegedly stealing the documents. He repeatedly uploaded proprietary business information to a company-issued laptop and downloaded it onto a personal hard drive before eventually sharing it “on a number of occasions” with his new colleagues at JAB and Pret Panera, according to the complaint.

The information went well beyond the pet-care unit where Szarzynski worked, Mars said.

“Szarzynski’s downloading was massive and included a broad range of confidential and proprietary Mars documents about multiple global business sectors,” Mars said in the complaint. “The forensic evidence shows that Szarzynski carefully targeted the Mars documents he unlawfully downloaded.”

The suit identified several examples of alleged downloads, including one in which 6,166 documents were copied, according to the complaint.

“We look forward to aggressively defending our conduct and proving our position in court,” JAB’s Johnson said in the statement.

The case is Mars Inc. v. Szarzynski, 1:20-cv-01344, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Washington).

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