Wednesday, January 16th 2013
AMD Accuses Ex-Staff of Leaking 100,000 Documents to NVIDIA
AMD alleged that four of its former employees ferried tens of thousands of confidential company documents over to NVIDIA. Among the four are AMD's former vice-president of strategic development Robert Feldstein, whose claim to fame was the big Xbox 360 GPU deal that continues to bring revenue. Feldstein left the company in July 2012, taking with him, a stash of company documents, named as "trade secrets." Three other former AMD employees are named in the lawsuit. AMD claims it has forensic evidence to prove the defendants used external storage devices to copy sensitive information from the company network, in breach of agreements.
Source:
ArsTechnica
46 Comments on AMD Accuses Ex-Staff of Leaking 100,000 Documents to NVIDIA
First you get these guy to feel there’s no way out, then they tell AMD Lawyers who at Nvidia had taken control of such files for a plea-bargain, and AMD's on their way…
"In May, PepsiCo told Coca-Cola that it had received a letter from a person calling himself "Dirk" offering "very detailed and confidential information" about Coke's products for a fee, according to the DOJ press release.
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A PepsiCo spokesman said that the company was pleased to be of assistance in the investigation. :[INDENT]'We did what any responsible company would do," said the spokesman. "Competition can be fierce, but it must also be fair and legal.'"
[/INDENT]
NVIDIA should be tried as well
I'd have thought if there was a chance that Nvidia as a company could be proven to hold AMD propriety documents, then the suit and destruction of evidence injunction would have covered them also.
Look on the bright side, at least the AMD employee wasn't taking sensitive information out of the country this time. You'd have thought that:
1. Nvidia would have offered better advice than to tell them to use AMD office machines to run searches comprising " How to copy / delete large numbers of documents" (see page 5 of the civil suit), and
2. Whats the net worth of having details of AMD's business strategy ? AMD's roadmaps change more often than traffic lights.
some of these documents show that AMD is struggling to fix their micro stutter issues.
Nvidia staff member sees this, pushes third party websites to test to 'prove' that nvidia offer smooth gaming.
nvidia didnt steal the data, or do anything with it - but they used the information to push sales their way for some years to come.
again just a theoretical example - but how do you sue for maybes and might haves?
I don't think nVidia bothered either.
Simply amazing how such supposedly "smart" people can be so stupid.
I can watch users web searches by DNS records, IP address connection and port monitor, and also capture all network activity.
Nothing this blatent if true though.
This is NOT AMD trying to fill its bank, its AMD trying to prevent industrial espionage, sharing or licensing technology or trade secrets is one thing, but theft is just as bad as stealing hard currency.
and cuz that stupidity, It'll make lot of money too..if AMD can proove the data used by nVidia, but still this too bad if true.
You can't sue a large corporation when technically, they didn't do anything wrong. Yes, ethically, they were wrong, but they didn't hire these people to go in and steal documents from AMD. If that were the case, then yes, they could sue NVidia. But since that's not the case (as it seems), no, the individuals are responsible for their own actions.
If you took sensative information from the White House and gave it over to China, you'd be tried for espionage and treason. They wouldn't punish China.
As for the legal aspects, on top of the already mentioned they can have things like residual benefits taken away if there are any, that includes owned shares I'm fairly certain.
Onto the rest of this, not surprised and yes this does happen all the time with any industry, they just don't catch it all that often.