Zynga, the company that has long been accused of stealing other companies' game concepts and adding the word "Ville" to them, is now accusing a former employee of stealing ideas from them. On October 12, social gaming company Zynga filed a complaint in a San Francisco court against Alan Patmore, the company's former general manager for the CityVille game, alleging that he stole trade secrets from the company before going to work for competitor Kixeye.

In the filing, Zynga alleges Patmore copied over 760 corporate files into his DropBox account (in a folder which he allegedly named "Zynga"). The information taken, Zynga claims, included "know-how of core game mechanics and monetization techniques."

Suing former employees isn't new territory for Zynga. In 2009, the company went after four former employees who moved to Disney's Playdom for theft of trade secrets, eventually settling with Disney. But in this case, Zynga is focusing on Patmore and not his new employer. In a statement to AllThingsD, a Kixeye spokesperson said that the company is not involved in the suit. "Unfortunately, this appears to be Zynga's new employee retention strategy: Suing former employees to scare current employees into staying."

Kixeye hasn't been shy about berating Zynga's treatment of its employees in the past. In July, the company posted this YouTube video satirizing the work environment at Zynga and other major game developers as part of its own recruiting efforts: