Amazon drops non-compete suit against employee who left for Smartsheet
- Gene Farrell was vice president of enterprise applications EC2 Windows at Amazon Web Services before he sought to join Smartsheet.
- A Washington state judge has lifted the temporary restraining order stopping him from working at Smartsheet.
Amazon on Wednesday moved to drop its non-compete lawsuit against a former employee just one week after filing the suit.
The case came about when Gene Farrell sought to leave a leadership position in Amazon's public cloud division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and join Smartsheet, a work management software company based in the Seattle area.
Judge Jim Rogers of the King County Superior Court in Washington granted Amazon's temporary restraining order blocking Farrell from working as senior vice president of product. But now the parties in the suit -- Farrell and Amazon -- have resolved the suit, and on Wednesday Rogers lifted the temporary restraining order.
"The dispute between Gene Farrell and Amazon has been resolved based on temporary restrictions on the scope of Gene's role at Smartsheet consistent with his agreement with Amazon," Smartsheet spokeswoman wrote in an email to CNBC. "We are pleased to have Gene back on the team as we continue to focus on serving our customers and growing our business."