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Billionaire Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue has been accused of failing to disclose “material” information when it secured a warrant to raid the homes and offices of ex-Fortescue staff, who have been accused of stealing the iron ore group’s intellectual property, according to court documents.
Fortescue has taken legal action in the Federal Court against three former employees: Michael Masterman, Bart Kolodziejczyk and Bjorn Winther-Jensen. It has accused the men of copying and taking the company’s intellectual property when they left to start a rival green iron project, called Element Zero.
Former Fortescue executives Bart Kolodziejczyk and Michael Masterman are the co-founders of green iron start-up Element Zero.Credit: Eamon Gallagher
Element Zero has rejected the allegations, and its chief executive, Masterman, has described the claims as “spurious”. Fortescue’s executive chairman, Forrest, has argued that protecting the company’s intellectual property remains “critical to its success”.
A warrant was secured to conduct raids on Element Zero’s offices and the homes of Kolodziejczyk and Winther-Jensen. It is estimated that three terabits of data was gathered from personal computers, mobile phones and cloud storage accounts.
Included in the trove of data were the entire business records of Element Zero, including payroll data, budgets and forecasts, and all the personal emails sent and received by Kolodziejczyk since 2008. However, Kolodziejczyk only started at Fortescue Future Industries on July 1, 2020, and ceased working there on November 5, 2021, in his roles as chief scientist (energy) and later chief scientist.
Kolodziejczyk is now chief technology officer of Element Zero, a company he and Masterman founded at the end of 2022.
In affidavits filed to the court, Gilbert + Tobin partner Michael Williams, who is representing Element Zero, said he had “serious concerns” about the material that was relied on by Fortescue to secure the warrant from the Federal Court.
He said the material “omitted key information” about the relationship between Fortescue and Element Zero, particularly in the six months before the orders were executed.
Williams said the material relied on for the orders, which included affidavits, did not disclose a meeting that occurred on December 19 between Masterman, Fortescue’s chief legal counsel, Phil McKeiver, and Paul Dewar of law firm Davies Collison Cave. Dewar is representing Fortescue in its case against Element Zero.