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.'"

Comments

bureaucracy != corporate espionage

[Vellmont]

You're confusing expansion of a company into ever increasing markets with illegal behaviour. All businesses will try to expand to whatever capacity they can sustain. But that doesn't mean it's inevidible they'll engage in illegal behaviour like is alleged here.

I don't expect large companies to behave ethically (small companies maybe). They'll do whatever they like without regard to anyone else. I do expect companies to behave within the bounds of the law. They often don't of course, but my point is that illegal behaviour isn't a given for a company.