Shopee fails in court bid to stop ex-exec from joining ByteDance

Firm had alleged that his work at TikTok Shop breached non-competition clause

- Samuel Devaraj

E-commerce firm Shopee Singapore has failed in court to prevent its former senior employee from joining rival ByteDance, which operates TikTok and TikTok Shop.

Justice Kwek Mean Luck dismissed the platform's claims to seek interim injunctions to prevent Mr Lim Teck Yong from accepting employment with ByteDance, and to prevent him from soliciting its clients and employees.

In a judgment on Jan 31, the judge said that the online shopping platform had failed to prove that its claim that Mr Lim had breached non-competition restriction terms of his employment was not frivolous.

Shopee, which was represented by Mr Clarence Ding Si-Liang and Ms Ariane Kea Tong from JWS Asia Law Corporation, submitted that Mr Lim had acquired information while participating in regular meetings, where the company's strategies and priorities for all markets were shared and discussed.

Justice Kwek said the argument that this "general know-how" was the confidential information Shopee seeks to protect would exclude Mr Lim from being employed in all the markets in which the company was operating, even though these are markets that he had no specific information about in the 12 months before he left the company.

"In effect, Lim would simply be restrained from working for any competitor of Shopee who had been in Shopee's markets.

"I have serious doubts that it could be said that there is a serious question if this would be regarded as reasonable as between the parties or reasonable in the interest of the public," said the judge.