It was a dynamic couple of weeks in the delivery domain of the grocery business, not the least of which was Uber’s swift expansion via its purchase of Postmates followed by multiple market launches via its still-new Cornershop subsidiary. But as this sector becomes more essential, and less roomy, business is sure to get heated.
In the case of news first reported on by Bloomberg, that heat revealed some smoke in the form of a lawsuit in which Instacart alleges Cornershop stole intellectual property.
“Instacart is facing a new challenge in the U.S. from a Chilean upstart, and it’s unfortunate that their first move is litigation instead of competition,” a spokesman for Uber wrote in an emailed statement to Bloomberg. “Cornershop will be responding to this complaint but won’t be deterred in bringing grocery delivery to more customers in the U.S.”
The lawsuit went on to allege that Cornershop stole thousands of images from Instacart’s systems, with the latter claiming the former stole these copyrighted images and modified the file names in order to conceal the alleged theft.
Instacart also said Cornershop posted job listings for software engineers with “advanced scraping” and other skills, which the complainant believed was in direct connection to the theft.
In the wake of shelter-in advisements and increasing regulations to brick-and-mortar operations relating to COVID-19, grocery delivery demand has skyrocketed and Instacart is on track to process more than $35 billion in grocery sales this year alone.
Deli Market News will diligently report as more is revealed to the story.
