SARASOTA — The founders of a local marketing and analytics firm are tangling in court over allegations that one of them may have shared confidential information with a corporate rival.

AdRizer LLC filed a lawsuit last month, claiming former chief technology officer Stephen H. Flee Jr. had joined competitor Revcontent in violation of an employment agreement.

AdRizer, saying it fears Flee may hurt its business by giving Revcontent access to trade secrets, is seeking an injunction to stop him from working for any local competitor for five years.

It also wants at least $592,897 in damages, the amount Flee received after selling his stake in the company when he resigned in April 2018.

Flee has not responded to the lawsuit, which was filed against him March 25 in Sarasota Circuit Court. Revcontent is not a defendant.

Charlie Terenzio, Revcontent's brand manager, confirmed that Flee was working there as chief technology officer.

"Any ongoing legal issues, we’re not going to comment at all," he said.

Flee and chief executive officer Kenneth Bond founded AdRizer in 2013. According to the suit, Flee developed a "one-of-a-kind" technology that allows a web publisher to reach a desired audience through targeted advertisements and then measure the return on investment of those ads. That technology is part of AdRizer's overall platform, called Cortex.

Revcontent is a digital marketing company that delivers personalized ad content to a publisher's web site.

Both companies have been recognized as leaders of Sarasota-Manatee's growing technology sector.

As CTO, Flee had access to AdRizer's trade secrets and confidential business and technical information, including its clients and finances, AdRizer attorney Charles A. Carlson of Tampa stated in the lawsuit. In his employment agreement, Flee agreed that after leaving AdRizer he would not work for a competitive business in the region for two years.

AdRizer said it recently learned that Flee had gone to work as chief technology officer at Revcontent, which offers similar services in the form of data, tracking and analytics to customers. It has a "justified, imminent fear" that Flee will share his technology and knowledge of AdRizer's business and customers, the lawsuit states.

"Such damages include loss of business, lost profits, loss of goodwill, loss of value of proprietary information, damage to business reputation and other direct, consequential and incidental damages," Carlson said.