Hartford Business Journal

HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | JUNE 29, 2026 13 Westfield Bank Commercial Lending Member FDIC westfieldbank.com Scott Apuzzo and Penelope Moroso (with Westfield Bank's Jamie Garcia) | Moroso Performance Products When Moroso Performance Products chose a banking partner, they looked for responsiveness, flexibility, and a team that understood their business. Westfield Bank combines substantial lending capacity with true local decision-making to help Connecticut businesses invest, expand, and thrive. Acquiring a business Growing your business Managing cash flow Purchasing equipment Financing an ESOP Supporting private & public contracts Let's grow together. Go to westfieldbank.com/business/commercial-lending or call 860.265.3921. A better lending partner for your business. " I love working with Westfield Bank. They have a smaller bank atmosphere, but big bank capabilities." — Scott Apuzzo, Chief Financial Officer Bloomfield | Enfield | Granby | West Hartford who joined Slide — violated confidenti- ality and noncompete agreements. According to the complaint, those agreements prohibited employees from disclosing proprietary informa- tion about Datto's operations and processes. As of September 2025, more than half of Slide's 30 employees had previously worked at Datto. Brad Lawrence, managing partner at Cantor Colburn, a Hartford intellectual property law firm not involved in the case, said the dispute now centers on a familiar question: whether former employees relied on general knowledge and experience gained at Datto or took protected information with them when they left. It's a distinction courts often struggle to define, he said. "And that line moves," Lawrence said. "It's jury-dependent, it's judge-de- pendent. It's not a binary line." Courts are generally reluctant to prevent people from working in the industries where they built their careers, he added. "Courts are loath to say, 'You worked in server maintenance, so you can no longer work in server maintenance,'" Lawrence explained. "But they also want to say you can't load up a thumb drive with all the software and take it somewhere else." The Chancery court case is sched- uled for trial in June 2027, according to IT Channel Oxygen. The patent case In federal court, Kaseya and Datto allege four Slide products infringe eight patents covering backup and disaster-recovery technology. They are seeking a permanent injunction — a court order that would bar Slide from selling the products — along with attor- neys' fees and enhanced damages, arguing Slide knowingly infringed Datto's patents. Slide has said it went to great lengths to avoid using Datto's tech- nology. In a 2025 interview on the Business of Tech podcast, Fass said his company was "extraordinarily vigilant," even paying for its founding engineers to hire their own lawyers to confirm they brought no Datto code or confidential information. Datto has since cited that statement in its federal complaint as evidence that Slide knew about its patents before launching, part of its argument that any infringement was willful. Both Slide and Kaseya declined to comment for this story. Slide has asked the court to dismiss most of the claims. That motion is awaiting a ruling. Patent vs. trade secret Lawrence said patents and trade secrets protect intellectual property in fundamentally different ways. Trade secrets derive their value from secrecy. Lawrence pointed to the Coca-Cola formula as a classic example. It has never been patented and is known only to a small number of people. Patents, by contrast, require inven- tors to publicly disclose how an invention works in exchange for legal protection for a limited period. "When you file for a patent, you submit it to the government, and that document becomes public," Lawrence said. "Once it's published, you can't sue someone for stealing a trade secret, because it's not a secret anymore." But companies can sue for patent infringement even if no confidential information was taken. An injunction blocking a competing product is "the holy grail" in patent litigation, Lawrence said, though such outcomes are uncommon. Most cases end with damages, royalties or settlements. Winning a patent case can be diffi- cult because patents protect specific methods, not results. "As long as it achieves the same result but goes about it with different steps, that's OK," Lawrence said — which is essentially what Slide argues it did. Brad Lawrence CT Innovations is a Slide investor By Andrew Larson alarson@hartfordbusiness.com W hile Datto and Slide battle in court, Slide has continued to attract support from Connecticut's venture capital ecosystem. Connecticut Innovations invested $500,000 in Slide's Series A funding round in April 2025 before any lawsuits were filed. The quasi- public venture capital agency later committed another $500,000 in December 2025, after Datto filed its Court of Chancery lawsuit in Delaware and before the federal patent case was filed. "CI was aware of the lawsuit during our due diligence process in Slide, and we did factor that into our investment decision," said Lauren Carmody, the agency's chief marketing officer. Connecticut Innovations has also committed $2 million to the Outsiders Fund, the venture capital firm McChord launched after leaving Datto. About $800,000 of that commitment has been funded so far. The fund also participated in Slide's Series B financing round. 2027 THE BEST PLACES TO WORK IN CONNECTICUT AWARDS HONOR COMPANIES WHO RANK HIGHEST IN EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION AS DETERMINED BY A SURVEY ADMINISTERED NATIONALLY. WINNERS WILL BE RECOGNIZED IN A SPECIAL ISSUE OF THE HARTFORD BUSINESS JOURNAL IN PRINT AND ONLINE AND RECOGNIZED AT AN AWARDS EVENT IN MARCH 2027. JOIN THE CELEBRATION 2027 NOMINATIONS ARE OPEN! JOIN THE CELEBRATION 2027 NOMINATIONS ARE OPEN! NOMINATION DEADLINE: OCTOBER 2, 2026 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM/HBJ-EVENTS PRESENTED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

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