A Kansas judge ruled on July 8, 2009 that partnership claims by software developer Eric Redmond, formerly of Lenexa, Kan., against Jason van Zyl, currently chief technical officer of Sonatype, Inc., will proceed to trial this October.
Sonatype, Inc., based in Mountain View, Calif, provides commercial support for the
software build tool Maven and claims a majority of the Fortune 500 as customers.
Redmond asserts that he was a founding partner of Sonatype in late 2006 and was forced out by van Zyl in July 2007. In January of 2008, “Sonatype, Inc.” was formed in Delaware to receive millions in equity investments from the venture capital firms Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and Morgenthaler Partners. Filings with the SEC showed the sale of at least $3.5 million in equity. Van Zyl denied a partnership with Redmond and filed with the court for summary judgment.
In his response to the summary judgment motion, Redmond alleged that van Zyl promised equal ownership of Sonatype and pointed to a January 2007 e-mail where van Zyl described Redmond as "[o]ne of the partners of Sonatype." Redmond says he was forced out after thousands of hours of work, including a substantially complete draft of a guidebook called Maven: the Definitive Guide. Redmond says he drew only $9,000 from the business over eight months.
Van Zyl claims that Redmond was fully and fairly compensated and that Redmond's work on Maven: the Definitive Guide was re-drafted prior to its 2008 publication by O'Reilly. The court denied van Zyl's motion to halt the partnership claims, finding a “genuine issue of material fact” as to whether Sonatype was a partnership when Redmond was involved.
Trial is scheduled to begin October 26, 2009 in Olathe, Kan.
"We are very pleased with this ruling on the partnership claims," said Jonathan Whitehead, an attorney for Redmond. "Eric Redmond put in thousands of hours, as a founding partner of Sonatype, to make the business a success. We look forward to telling the rest of the story at trial."
Van Zyl is represented by Shook Hardy & Bacon LLP of Kansas City, Mo. The case is Redmond v. Sonatype, et al., 07-CV-9411, Johnson County, Kan.
