In June 2025, Sparkle Pop began a proceeding against Alliance Entertainment for “disregard of binding non-disclosure and non-solicitation obligations and its theft of valuable of trade secrets.” For those who might not remember, Alliance Entertainment originally won the bid for Diamond’s assets, then Diamond went with Universal Distribution and Ad Populum (Sparkle Pop’s parent company), then back to Alliance. Then Alliance ended their bid claiming fraud by Diamond and those involved. Eventually Universal Distribution and Ad Populum/Sparkle Pop won the bid.

Sparkle Pop accuses Alliance for abusing the bankruptcy process and gaining inside access to Diamond’s “employees, trade secrets, and proprietary information, all while delaying the sale of assets to legitimate purchasers.” Alliance recently hired seven Diamond employees which Sparkle Pop calls “poaching” and claiming it has “hobbled” its business. It further claims Alliance has “exploited its inside knowledge of Diamond Comic’s confidential information to usurp key distribution relationships with vendors and customers, further undermining the business.”

Alliance has signed a non-disclosure and non-solicitation agreement that bars the accused conduct according to the motion.

Two new orders have been handed down in the case regarding confidentiality and discovery.

The confidentiality order states that party to the litigation and non-party information can designate things “confidential” that contain trade secrets, sensitive technical information, marketing, financial, sales, and other business, contains private personal information, information that’s gained in confidence from third parties, and other information that falls under this in good faith.

It also lays out information that’s “Attorneys’ Eyes Only” and what confidential material can be disclosed. It also goes on about what happens if there’s a data breach, or unintentional disclosure.

We’re expecting a lot of this as the case progresses but we’ll do what we can to connect the dots.

Also release is the order regarding “discovery and electronically stored information.” Discovery is the process when the parties hand over information to each other relevant to the case, think emails, texts, Slack messages, that sort of thing. It can involve millions of documents that have to be gone through. This document goes through the details of the information, the format it has to be provided, and a lot more small details as to the data involved.

We’ll be having an expert on to talk about the discovery process and the details of this order.

You can read both documents below.