Kaseya Sues Former Datto Founder’s New Venture For Alleged ‘Copycat Offerings:’ What You Need To Know

‘We just had a reason to believe that our IP was compromised,’ Kaseya CEO Rania Succar told CRN at DattoCon this week when asked about the lawsuit against Slide. ‘And it’s important to us that we look at that.’

Kaseya is suing backup and recovery software maker Slide for theft of intellectual property, alleging that Slide co-founder and Chairman Austin McChord has simply re-created his previous venture, Datto, a beloved part of the MSP toolkit that Kaseya acquired and took private in 2022.

Kaseya, which acquired Datto for $6.2 billion, is seeking an injunction against Slide to prevent the company from selling its backup product, as well as several forms of unspecified monetary awards.

“Slide misappropriated Datto’s trade secrets to launch a competing BCDR [business continuity and disaster recovery] company designed to improperly undercut Datto’s success by marketing to Datto’s customer base copycat offerings that leverage Datto’s proprietary technologies,” Kaseya’s complaint read.

Dave Sobel with Business of Tech first reported the lawsuit on Oct. 6.

Kaseya does not allege any physical theft of intellectual property in the complaint that it filed in Delaware Court of Chancery on Sept. 3. Rather, Kaseya alleges McChord—who created Datto in his parents’ basement and launched it in 2007—hired engineers who worked at Datto to build a competing product in a short time frame.

Slide opened for business in February 2025. McChord’s fellow Datto co-founder, Michael Fass, is CEO of Slide.

In legal filings, Slide countered that McChord and his team have built Slide from scratch as a next-generation backup and recovery application because the team hoped to see an innovative product for MSPs on the market.

“Slide’s founders are not reckless, and they respect intellectual property. As will be shown in this litigation, Slide’s success was based on hiring great engineers who designed and painstakingly built a truly next-generation BCDR platform from the ground up,” lawyers for the Norwalk, Conn.-based company wrote in a Sept. 17 answer to Kaseya’s suit.

Kaseya And Slide CEOs’ Comments To CRN

“We just had a reason to believe that our IP was compromised,” Kaseya CEO Rania Succar (pictured) told CRN at DattoCon this week when asked about the lawsuit. “And it’s important to us that we look at that. The key message we want our partners to know is that data protection, cyber resilience, is a huge part of our future platform, and we are innovating like crazy in this space.”

Slide is asking the court to dismiss Kaseya’s case and return the money it spent on lawyers and filing fees.

“Bottom line, Slide developed its technology on its own without using Datto’s trade secrets, IP or confidential information,” McChord and Fass wrote in a statement to CRN. “We believe in the justice system, we will vigorously defend ourselves and we are confident we will show that Kaseya’s claims are unfounded.”

Slide’s lawyers said the company can show during litigation that it took steps to ensure its product was not built using “any Datto code, trade secrets, or confidential information.”

“Discovery will also show … Slide’s product was not built using any of Datto’s intellectual property; and that the one (supposed) trade secret Datto identified in its complaint is not used by Slide and is not even useful for a modern BCDR platform,” Slide stated. It used the word “supposed” in parentheses in its filing.

In a statement to CRN, McChord said Slide stands on its own within a broad set of backup products.

“Halo is a PSA. Ninja is an RMM. These are not duplicates of the products they compete with. Neither is Slide,” he wrote. “We created a new product within an existing product category, just like Halo and Ninja did. We created something brand new and there is a ton of demand for it and MSPs are excited about it almost as much as we are.”

Engineering Issues

Lawyers for Kaseya used several paragraphs of their complaint comparing the engineering similarities between Datto and Slide in what they said is proof that the product was crafted from misappropriated trade secrets rather than cut from whole cloth.

“Developing from scratch a fully functional BCDR platform, especially one that includes advanced features like Datto’s HIR, which has been developed and refined by Datto for more than a decade, would be a massive, time-intensive, and expensive undertaking. Yet, as McChord boasted, ‘the amount of money put into Slide to get to [launch] is vanishingly small compared to many other start-ups,’” the lawsuit stated, citing McChord’s statements on a podcast.

In Slide’s response, it pointed to flaws with Kaseya’s technical understanding of backup and what constitutes trade secrets. In one instance, Slide pointed out that a capability Datto described as misappropriated was available as open-source code and was not a protected trade secret.

“Defendant also admits that it installs official VirtIO drivers maintained and digitally signed by Red Hat, including the viostor (storage) and netkvm (network) drivers. Defendant denies that its use of standard open-source drivers is evidence of trade secret misappropriation or wrongdoing,” Slide stated.

In another portion, Kaseya lawyers said that Slide products and services use the automatic installation of drivers “and employ certain registry modifications to permit instantly booting a backup as a VM,” which is also a feature of Datto’s backup.

Again, Slide lawyers argued that the feature is not a secret.

“Defendant denies that booting a backup as a virtual machine is evidence of trade secret misappropriation or wrongdoing,” the lawyers said.

Kaseya: ‘Multiple Customers … Have Taken New Business To Slide’

According to Kaseya, the company has lost business to Slide.

“Since Slide launched in February 2025, multiple customers of Datto from whom Datto had a reasonable expectation of repeat business have taken new business to Slide instead of Datto, and multiple prospective customers who had shown interest in doing business with Datto also have taken new business to Slide instead of Datto,” the company stated.

Slide said it offers a modern BCDR product and the kind of “outstanding customer care that MSPs had come to know from Datto prior to its acquisition by Kaseya.”

“As a result, Slide is winning MSP customers, while Datto has been losing MSP customers since its acquisition by Kaseya,” Slide stated. “But as detailed further below and as Slide will show throughout this case, the lawsuit has no basis, and shows only that—while Kaseya may be rolling out new marketing claiming that it values and wants to serve the MSP community—Kaseya remains the same company it has always been.”

Kaseya’s lawyers stated that Datto has “thrived” following the 2022 acquisition. Kaseya has invested heavily in further innovating the Datto products, developing Datto’s competitive strategies, and building its market and customer-facing presence, they wrote.

Kaseya’s lawsuit also stated that McChord has disparaged that progress and stated that Datto is “in the past,” “old,” “not keeping up,” and no longer an innovator, and suggested that Datto does not take care of its customers and does not invest in customer support.

‘#DattoMinusKaseyaEqualsSlide’

In an effort to prove their point that McChord (pictured) intentionally took ideas from Datto to create Slide, Kaseya’s lawyers said he liked a comment on social media that stated, “Datto Minus Kaseya Equals Slide.”

That statement was part of a LinkedIn post created by Christopher Brescia, CEO of Freshtech IT, who included the hashtag #DattoMinusKaseyaEqualsSlide in his endorsement of the product.

Freshtech IT is an East Hartford, Conn.-based MSP.

In the full post, Brescia wrote, “Awesome time meeting the team at Slide HQ with Pat Fuscaldo ! Got the business continuity team at Freshtech IT a little present I’m calling “DATTO, but without Kaseya 🪦” aka “now we can all sleep a lot better at night”

He then added the hashtag #DattoMinusKaseyaEqualsSlide.

CRN has reached out to Breschia for comment.

McChord gave the post a “thumbs up.”

Kaseya’s lawyers have said that thumbs-up is proof that Slide is built on Datto’s design and that it was obvious to MSP customers.

“The industry quickly recognized Slide for what it was—an attempt by McChord and Fass to replicate Datto,” lawyers for Kaseya wrote.

“Slide has been clear that it is built on Datto’s design. On social media, McChord endorsed a commentator’s statement, in response to the launch of Slide, that ‘Datto Minus Kaseya Equals Slide.’ And McChord, as Slide’s CEO, stated to a reporter that Slide was launched as “unfinished business” from the work of McChord and Fass at Datto,” Kaseya’s lawsuit stated.

Former Datto Employees

Kaseya accused Slide of “poaching” former Datto employees to create its product. It mentioned in its lawsuit that Slide not only has McChord and Fass, but 17 of the 30 people it has hired used to work at Datto.

Those include a former principal software engineer, product managers, senior account managers, people “who collectively spent over 100 years working on Datto’s projects and technology, Kaseya’s lawsuit stated.

Slide acknowledged hiring former Datto employees including Datto’s former principal engineer Jeffrey Knapp, who left Datto in October 2022 and joined Slide in November 2023. His signed confidentiality agreement is included as an exhibit Kaseya presented in its complaint.

“Since the acquisition, and at Kaseya’s direction, Datto changed its approach to both MSPs and to the amazing Datto employees who represented the company and embodied its customer-centric values,” Slide wrote in its answer to Kaseya’s complaint. “The effects on Datto’s reputation, its partners, and the overall MSP ecosystem created by its acquisition by and association with Kaseya are well documented on the internet.”

Slide said it denies that it leveraged former Datto employees to access Datto proprietary information or that it did anything unlawful or improper.

“It is, of course, a lot easier to file a lawsuit than it is to change a business culture,” Slide’s lawyers wrote. “So, it is not surprising that Kaseya has chosen to file this lawsuit.”

CJ Fairfield contributed to this report.