Slashdot Mirror
HP Accused of Spying on Dell
An anonymous reader writes "An ex-HP exec claims he was instructed by the company's management to spy on Dell's printer business plans. Karl Kamb, previously HP's vice president of business development and strategy, was named as a defendant in a federal lawsuit filed by HP in 2005, after he allegedly began his own company before leaving HP. Kamb, who has denied any wrongdoing, filed a countersuit in US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas claiming he was fired because of shading dealings involved in the corporate espionage. From the article: 'As a member of HP's imaging and printing group's "competitive intelligence team", Kamb said he was in a position to know that HP senior executives signed off on a plan to pay [Former Dell Japan President Katsumi] Iizuka to obtain details of what Dell was up to. Iizuka turned over the information to Kamb and he passed it along to HP, Kamb claimed.'"
Just as an FYI, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas has become very popular of late for the "little guy" suing a big corporation. The juries down there seem to hate large companies ;)
A lawsuit in the Eastern District of Texas is almost always associated with patent trolling, since the Eastern District of Texas certainly doesn't have much in the way of large cities, large corporations, or large R&D departments. Why it exists is a pretty decent question.