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

All bureaucracies tend this way...

[drinkypoo]

...at least, if they are successful. The purpose of a bureaucracy is to self-perpetuate, like any organism. It is powered by the enlightened self-interest of the employees within it. Every bureaucracy, if left unchecked, will seek to expand itself. Individuals within it may have morality but the organism as a whole does not.

To see these organizations spying is not a shock. If you let them continue to grow they will each run up against each other and start trying to find ways to subsume the others. It doesn't really matter to the consumer since each one is pretty much the sum of its parts...

I remember when...

[hackstraw]

HP actually _made_ excellent printers.

Now, HP spys on its customers and competeters printer habits.

Their stock value should reflect this better.

Eastern District of Texas

[frinkster]

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.

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.

Should have used genuine spies.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

HP should have learnt by now. It should have used the Genuine OEM brand spies. You might find cheaper replacement spies on the internet, but they leak eventually, and ruin it all.