NEWS
by Mark Barley
AMD employees accused of stealing company secrets for NVIDIA
According to reports a group of former AMD employees is accused of stealing top secret documents from the company and reporting back to NVIDIA.
A lawsuit filed, as reported by Ars Technica, states that AMD big shot Bob Feldstein is one of the former employees accused. Employees Manoo Desai, Richard Hagen and Nicolas Kociuk are also listed in the lawsuit as culprits.
The lawsuit states;
“AMD has uncovered evidence that three of the four defendants – Feldstein, Desai and Kociuk – transferred to external storage devices trade secrets and information in the days prior to their leaving AMD to work for Nvidia.”
The suit also states that the group accused is thought to have stolen over 100,000 documents between them. “The names of identified and transferred files match identically or very closely to the names of files on their AMD systems that include obviously confidential, proprietary and/or trade secret materials relating to developing and/or highly confidential business strategy.”
Feldstein is mentioned to have connected an external hard drive to his office computer on his last days with the company. “Onto those storage devices, three highly confidential files – two licensing agreements with significant customers and a document outlining proposed strategies to AMD’s strategic licensing – were transferred,” states the lawsuit.
The charges brought forth by the lawsuit are Misappropriation of Trade Secrets, Unfair Competition, Violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Breach of the Employee's Duty of Loyalty, and Breach of Contract and Conspiracy. We'll keep you updated.