LatAm List – Rappi, the Colombian food delivery giant, has come under fire from a legal case for intellectual property theft.
Mauricio Paba, José Mendoza, and Jorge Uribe have mounted a legal case against Rappi suggesting that Simón Borrero, CEO and co-founder of the company, stole their idea for the creation of a platform that allowed users to contact other people willing to run errands.
According to Nathalie Lozano Blanco, the lawyer representing the case, the entrepreneurs took their idea to Imaginamos, a company founded and represented by Simón Borrero, looking for development and business advice to help them to launch a platform that connected people to run errands.
Borrero had access to the confidential information regarding the proposed idea, which the entrepreneurs claim he used to develop a similar business model and create Rappi.
The case is being revised in both Colombia and the US, where it is going before the Federal Court for improper use of privileged information, violation of the industrial and commercial reserve, violation of moral rights of authors, and illicit enrichment of individuals.
In response to the case, the founders of Rappi lamented that “opportunistic people seek to have some recognition with this type of baseless accusation.”
Read more on Dinero.