An ed-tech company has agreed to drop a temporary injunction it obtained last week after it complained that it lost 20 schools and contracts worth €1.6 million after its former managers joined a rival company.
In the High Court last week, barristers for Olive, a trading name for Upskill Online Ltd, obtained wide-ranging orders that prohibited Eduvolve and related companies from marketing or providing any educational services to any school that worked with Olive. The order also restrained the defendants from disposing of some €15,000 worth of IT equipment under dispute.
Judge David Nolan granted the interim injunction after reading the affidavit of Brendan Kavanagh, Olive’s chief executive and founder, who complained that his former colleagues were unlawfully using Olive’s confidential information to poach schools.
The judge was satisfied there was a prima-facie case of “commercial sabotage”.
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The injunction orders were granted up to August 5th against three executives who formerly worked for or with Olive – Ian Gaughran, Erik Jentetics and Fintan Costello – and three companies: PNS Ltd, trading as PC Peripherals; Grafton Digital Ltd; and Eduvolve Ltd. None of the defendants had an opportunity to address the court before the orders were made and all have since filed affidavits denying any wrongdoing.
In court on Wednesday, Judge Michael Twomey was told that the two sides had agreed that the interim injunction orders could be discharged. Gaughran, Jentetics and Costello were all in court with their legal teams. Kavanagh was not in court but his company was represented by barrister Jarlath Ryan.
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An order was made by Twomey that noted denials from the defendants that said they had done nothing wrong. Gaughran, a former Microsoft executive who led Olive for Education until earlier this year, denied “conducting any services” that breached an agreement reached in March that settled an earlier case that Olive took against him and Jentetics.
The agreed order restrained him from conducting any services that breached the March settlement agreement.
The order also noted that Fintan Costello, a former Olive executive who is now head of Microsoft practice at PC Peripherals, denied extracting any information from Olive’s systems.
Kavanagh had accused Costello of hacking into Olive’s systems since he left to access confidential commercial information.
The order made on Wednesday required Costello to deliver a complete account of any information extracted from Olive’s systems.
Documents filed by Kavanagh show he believed Gaughran was working with Costello and Jentetics at Eduvolve in breach of a settlement that prohibited him from working in the education sector until August 2nd.
While Olive had sued Gaughran in January for allegedly seeking to solicit Olive’s customers for a new business, the terms of the settlement reached in March involved Olive paying Gaughran €61,713. Gaughran publicly withdrew allegations he made questioning Olive’s financial viability as part of the settlement.
In his affidavit, Kavanagh blamed Gaughran for Olive losing contracts for 20 schools with an annual value of €1.61 million which involved contracts for 2,690 individuals. Among the schools were Coláiste Bríde, Clondalkin; Loreto College, Foxrock; Blackrock College; Coláiste Bhaile Chláir in Claregalway; and Presentation Secondary School, Kilkenny. Those contracts ranged in value from €107,000 to €191,000.
“I have been advised by certain officers in those schools that approaches have been made by Mr Gaughran to those schools, suggesting that they would switch to PC Peripherals,” Kavanagh said.
Both Olive and Gaughran have accused the other side of breaching their settlement agreement, including its non-disparagement terms. Olive’s solicitor complained that Gaughran had publicly “liked” and “thereby endorsed negative commentary about Mr Kavanagh’s late daughter’s charity on LinkedIn and Twitter/X.
“Clearly this amounts to disparagement and was intended to be inflammatory by Mr Gaughran,” the legal letter sent on March 14th said.
Included in the filings is a copy of Fintan Costello’s resignation email sent to Kavanagh last January.
In his email, Costello said he was “appalled at the actions of the company with its continuous misrepresentations and non-payment to suppliers”. He said he was “particularly appalled by the actions taken this past week in Claregalway College”, one of the schools that has since left Olive’s school scheme.
Twomey adjourned the case until October 5th.
