Freelance Marketplace, Toptal Sues Andela For Copyright

Toptal, a marketplace platform for freelance and remote tech workers are hhas filed a lawsuit against a direct competitor Andela and several of its former employees who now work at Andela over what it calls theft of trade secrets in pursuit of ”a perfect clone of its business”

According to TechCrunch, Toptal’s lawsuit, filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York and embedded below, alleges that the employees reneged on confidentiality, non-solicitation and non-compete agreements with Toptal. Toptal also alleges interference with contract, unfair competition and misappropriation of trade secrets.

While both Toptal and Andela have built businesses around the idea of remote freelancers filling tech jobs — a concept that has increased in profile and acceptance as people shifted to remote work during the pandemic — the pair only emerged as very direct competitors in the last year or so.