Co-founder who worked for $1 a year loses bid for equity after court finds he’d been paid in shares elsewhere
A long-running dispute over ownership in a drone technology startup has ended with the Supreme Court of British Columbia rejecting a former executive’s claim to a stake in the company, ruling that any entitlement he had was already satisfied through shares in a related firm.
In Skycope Technologies Inc. v. Jia, Justice Hoffman dismissed Junfeng “Jack” Jia’s bid for equity in Skycope, a Vancouver-based anti-drone startup, despite acknowledging that he played a foundational role in building the business.
The case stems from the collapse of the working relationship between Skycope founder Zhenhua “Eric” Liu and Jia, the company’s former chief technology officer. At trial, Jia argued he was promised a significant ownership stake in exchange for taking a steep pay cut and helping develop the company’s core technology.
The court agreed that Jia’s contributions were substantial, noting he was “a matter of ‘life and death to the company,’” and that he accepted dramatically reduced compensation in reliance on an expected equity stake.
However, the key issue was whether that entitlement remained outstanding.
Justice Hoffman found that while Jia did have an equitable claim—based on unjust enrichment principles—that claim had already been fulfilled when he received shares in a related Chinese parent company, Shenzhen Shengkong...
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