High-end jewellery is displayed at a Cartier store on Place Vendome in Paris, France, July 2, 2019.
High-end jewellery is displayed at a Cartier store on Place Vendome in Paris, France, July 2, 2019.

In a lawsuit filed Monday in New York state, luxury jewelry company Cartier alleged that rival Tiffany & Co., owned by LVMH Monet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE, stole trade secrets that involved its high-end jewelry from an employee who left Cartier to work for Tiffany.

According to reports, Cartier alleges ‌Tiffany hired the “under-qualified” employee in December 2021 to learn more about Cartier’s more expensive jewelry pieces that cost anywhere from $50,000 to $10 million.

Tiffany reportedly fired the employee, Megan Marino, after just five weeks. Tiffany wants to pin most of the blame on her. However, Marino said in an affidavit that the jewelry company hired her to access Cartier's trade secrets rather than for her value as a high jewelry manager.

However, Cartier also alleges that Marino downloaded confidential information and then went to Tiffany with that information. By the time Tiffany learned from Cartier what Marino was up to, and fired her, Tiffany had “a substantial amount of Cartier’s confidential and trade secret information,” according to Bloomberg.

Marino is not the only employee named in the lawsuit. Another former Cartier employee whose name they did not reveal went to Tiffany to work on a high jewelry project, “Blue Book.” The problem is that the employee was under a six-month non-compete agreement.

Cartier did its own investigation that “opened a window into Tiffany’s disturbing culture of misappropriating competitive information,” according to the lawsuit obtained by Bloomberg.

In the injunction, Cartier, a unit of Switzerland’s Richemont SA, requests ‌Tiffany return and never again use stolen trade secrets.

The damages Cartier seeks from the lawsuit have not been made public.