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United States District Court

Northern District of California

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

DELL’ORO GROUP, INC.,

Plaintiff,

v.

ALAN WECKEL, et al.,

Defendants.

Case No. 3:17-cv-00750-JD 

ORDER RE ARBITRATION

Re: Dkt. No. 31

Plaintiff Dell’Oro Group, Inc. sued its former employee, Alan Weckel, for purloining the 

company’s proprietary and confidential business information. Dkt. No. 13. Dell’Oro also sued 

the 650 Group, LLC, a business Weckel created after he left Dell’Oro. The amended complaint 

alleges a breach of contract claim against Weckel based on an “Agreement of Nondisclosure of 

Trade Secrets and Confidential Information, and Assignment of Patent, Copyright, and Other 

Rights” (“the Agreement”), and several federal and California state law claims arising out of the 

same alleged data misappropriation underlying the contract claim. The 650 Group is named only 

in two trade secrets counts.

Weckel and the 650 Group have moved to send the dispute to arbitration under an 

“Arbitration Agreement” that Weckel and Dell’Oro signed at the start of his employment in 2006. 

Dkt. No. 31-2. Under the broad language of this agreement, the parties committed to arbitrating 

“all matters directly or indirectly related to” Weckel’s employment, including a breach of contract 

claim based on the Agreement. Although the 650 Group is not a signatory to the arbitration 

agreement, defendants say the claims against it are inextricably intertwined with the claims against 

Weckel under the Agreement, and so 650 Group is entitled to assert the arbitration commitment. 

Dkt. No. 31 at 7-8.
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United States District Court

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Dell’Oro does not attack the arbitration agreement as unconscionable or unenforceable in 

any respect. Dkt. No. 42. It would be hard pressed to levy such charges given that the agreement 

is its own work. Dell’Oro’s main objections are that the 650 Group has “no standing” to invoke 

arbitration and that defendants waived any right to arbitration by “engaging in litigation conduct.” 

Id. at 4-9.

Neither objection carries any weight. The waiver contention is particularly thin. Overall, 

little of substance has happened here beyond a case management conference and this motion, 

which defendants filed promptly after service of the complaint. Dell’Oro has not shown that 

defendants have acted inconsistently with their arbitration demand, or that Dell’Oro was 

prejudiced in any way by their conduct. Waiver cannot be found in these circumstances. See 

Martin v. Yasuda, 829 F.3d 1118, 1124-25 (9th Cir. 2016). 

The “standing” argument is also unavailing. While it is true that the 650 Group was not a 

party to the Agreement or the arbitration agreement, its status as a non-signatory does not 

absolutely bar invocation of arbitration. California, whose law the parties agree applies here, 

expressly allows non-signatories to enforce an arbitration agreement on equitable estoppel grounds 

when the claims against the non-signatory “are dependent on or inextricably bound up with” the 

agreement featuring arbitration. Murphy v. DirecTV, Inc., 724 F.3d 1218, 1232 (9th Cir. 2013) 

(quoting Goldman v. KPMG LLP, 92 Cal. Rptr. 3d 534, 537 (Cal. Ct. App. 2009)). That is 

eminently the case here, where the 650 Group is alleged to be the business Weckel set up to 

exploit the fruit of breaching the Agreement and poaching Dell’Oro’s proprietary materials. The 

complaint portrays the 650 Group as nothing more then the vessel into which Weckel purportedly 

poured his ill-gotten gains. That is more than enough to allow it to assert the arbitration 

agreement.

Consequently, the case is sent to arbitration pursuant to the terms of the arbitration 

agreement. The Court’s evidence preservation order, Dkt. No. 41, remains in effect pending 

further order. The case will be closed administratively but not dismissed. The parties are directed 
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United States District Court

Northern District of California

to file joint status reports on the arbitration proceedings every 90 days from the date of this order.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: August 14, 2017

JAMES DONATO

United States District Judge