So, I'm bored and read the complaint and the employment agreements a bit more carefully. I'm starting to lean more to 4d chess by dan and jake than dumb zone.
I don't know about the IP stuff...who owned the twitters and the website and the logo...but that seems to be fairly insignificant in this case. And they can fuck off with the disparagement. There are hours and hours of every single host on the station disparaging cumulus.
I was focusing more on the non-compete's. I think Dan has a strong case to be in the clear. In his agreement, he is not allowed to provide services to a competing business. A competing business is any business that offers essentially the same as the Company Business. The company business is defined in his contract as commercial radio stations. There are other sections in the contract that also touch on working for another company.....but Dan didn't even set up an LLC. Not saying it's a slam dunk, but I think cumulus is in a bind with him...at least as it goes on the non-compete. It was just written poorly.
Jake's is different. It specifically talks about podcasting and states that is a competing business. However, jake exercised an early termination to his contract in December of 2022. He has been an at will employee since then. Yeah, the terms of his contract will apply, but enforcing a non-compete on an at-will employee is not the easiest thing in the world.
I also think this has been in the works for a while. Jake didn't exercise his right to end the contract early just for kicks. And there were several business tuesdays where they talked about non-compete agreements.
Still no clue how it shakes out and there are a lot more words in the contracts, but I don't think this was just a seat of the pants decision by either of them.