Starwood Hotels & Resorts has filed a lawsuit accusing Hilton Hotels Corp. and two former Starwood executives of corporate espionage in the development of Hilton’s new lifestyle brand.

Starwood said Ross Klein, global head of Hilton’s luxury and lifestyle brands, and Amar Lalvani, global head of luxury and lifestyle brand development, stole more than 100,000 electronic files before and after they joined Hilton. Starwood charges that Klein and Lalvani recruited other Starwood employees to help them.

Among the stolen materials, the lawsuit alleges, was confidential information about Starwood’s W brand, which Starwood said Hilton used in the development of its recently launched Denizen brand.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

"Starwood seeks to avoid litigation, but the egregiousness of the conduct and the volume of highly confidential documents taken left us no choice but to take this strong action to protect our brands and intellectual property for the benefit of our investors, associates, owners and customers," said Kenneth Siegel, Starwood’s chief administrative officer and general counsel.

"The wholesale looting of proprietary Starwood information, including a step-by-step playbook for creating a lifestyle luxury hotel brand, unfairly enabled Hilton to launch a new brand in only nine months instead of the usual three to five years."

Hilton said the lawsuit was without merit and that the company would vigorously defend itself.

"We fully intend to move forward on the development of our newest brand, Denizen Hotels," the company said.

The new brand was announced last month, although no deals for development have yet been signed.

In November 2008, Starwood said it "initiated arbitration with Klein over the nonsolicitation provisions in his employment contract and separation agreement, and put Hilton on notice to preserve relevant information."

"Three months later, and just days before Hilton announced the launch of its new lifestyle brand, Starwood received from Hilton eight large boxes of hard-copy documents as well as computer hard drives, zip drives and thumb drives containing more than 100,000 electronic files downloaded from Starwood computers, much of it highly proprietary," Starwood said. "It was at this point that Starwood first became aware of the theft."

Starwood is seeking preliminary and permanent injunctive relief plus compensatory and punitive damages from Hilton, Klein and Lalvani.

The lawsuit seeks a court order prohibiting Hilton from using or benefiting from Starwood’s confidential information and requiring Hilton and the individual defendants to return all Starwood confidential information.

Starwood also wants Hilton and the individual defendants to certify the destruction of all materials derived from Starwood confidential information, including plans for the promotion and roll-out of Hilton’s Denizen brand.

This report was updated to add Hilton's response to the lawsuit.