AMD Employee Charged With Stealing Intel Secrets

IWonderWhatICanPutInThisFieldWithoutBeingDeleted writes "A man who once worked for Intel and then jumped ship to join AMD has been accused of stealing his erstwhile employer's chip secrets. Federal detectives allege they discovered 19 CAD designs and more than 100 pages of confidential Intel documentation."

AMD and Intel?

[L4t3r4lu5]

Toyota and Ferrari?

Re:... and AMD wouldn't even touch the info

[Anonymous Coward]

"AMD" wouldn't touch it but it's quite possible lower level employees would look at it to gain valuable insights. Sure they wouldn't directly clone a design but just seeing how it's done can be invaluable.

Re:AMD and Intel?

[L4t3r4lu5]

Toyota engineers were found guilty of stealing industrial secrets from the Ferrari F1 team. Not so off-topic, nor alegory for AMD and Intel respectively. Just a similar situation.

Re:Oh No!

[bigstrat2003]

You're trying to be funny, but "CAD designs" isn't redundant. The two instances of the word "design" refer to different definitions of the word (design = plan, vs design = process of making a design), so they aren't redundant.

Re:Zomg...

[Prefader]

This has nothing to do with AMD competing with Intel. It appears that AMD didn't use the documents, and the employee made the copies on his own, "out of curiosity".

Re:Oh No!

[TheRealMindChild]

*cough*Computer aided DRAFTING*cough*. Drafting is "process of drawing", while design tells me... well, it is a finished design. Fully qualified, "CAD design" becomes "Computer aided process of drawing design".

Re:One thing that has always irked me...

[faloi]

It depends on your contract. Some employers have, essentially, an "all your ideas are belong to us" type clause. Anything you work on, on or off the clock, is their property. At one company I worked for, even if it was something that wasn't related to the industry, you submitted it to their lawyers and applied for leave to pursue it on your own if the company wasn't interested. Essentially, they give you your IP back.

Re:On the plus side...

[tlhIngan]

Oh holy spagetti monster, every IT person and CS person absolutely rapes the IP when they leave.

In my boxes that I used to clean out my desk is at least 30 confidential documents that were packed there by the moving company, (I got to keep my desk! that was cool!) and I know I have copies of all the code I wrote when I was there as well as all the SQL queries I wrote.

I have yet to meet someone that says, "I just left company X, no I don't have anything from my old job..." or " I cant fix that, I fixed that at company Y and they own the IP to that fix."

All of you rape and pillage IP when you leave. Accidentally or on purpose, you do it. Being a moron and trying to SELL that or taking it with malicious intent? that is the kicker. if he had it because that is how his desk was packed up for him then it's not his fault, nor is he liable for anything.

Except, in this case, he joined AMD while still employed at Intel. He joined AMD June 2. He gave Intel his resignation JUne 11 (and used vacation instead of working through the 2 weeks). Thus he was under the employment of both companies (who we all know are competitors) for a period of time. This goes beyond innocent "rape and pillage" of IP. At least that's part of your cleanup of your stuff, which you do before you start employment at your new employer. And anything you take is covered under NDA or other confidentiality agreeement. But this guy could not only have taken stuff from Intel and gave them to AMD, he could've (unlikely, but possible) taken stuff from AMD given them to Intel, too, and done it quite surreptitiously.

AMD would have to fire this guy because this would "taint" him, and by association, AMD, who then might have to battle Intel in some lawsuit alleging they used some of those designs in their next processor. AMD might not have, but because this guy has been working at both companies, it's very hard to tell, and AMD really has to do some house cleaning on anything this guy touched to make sure it's clean, and even then, it's hard to tell (the irony is, they can't tell if they're using that stolen IP without knowing what the stolen IP is...

Re:AMD and Intel?

[martinw89]

I have no idea about anything regarding Toyota and Ferrari. I can tell you, however, that McLaren and Ferrari [wired.com] were involved in a huge scandal just this past year. This was a big deal.

Re:Unfortunately

[operagost]

The Pentium P54 had the FP bug, not the PPro. Your geek card has been revoked.

Re:... and AMD wouldn't even touch the info

[UnknowingFool]

From what I read [cnn.com], Pepsi never got near the documents. One of the Coke employees sent a message to Pepsi using Coke official letterhead. Pepsi went to the FBI. Through an undercover agent, the FBI paid $10,000 for 14 pages of confidential Coca-Cola memos. Then the FBI paid for other documentation and even a product sample of an unreleased product. Pepsi never actually handled any Coca-Cola materials.

Re:AMD and Intel?

[Anonymous Coward]

That was McLaren and Ferrari.

Sorry, couldn't resist. Someone was wrong on the internet [xkcd.com]!