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AMD Employee Charged With Stealing Intel Secrets

Posted by timothy on from the great-now-make-them-all-compatible dept.

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."

4 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. AMD and Intel? by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Toyota and Ferrari?

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  2. Re:... and AMD wouldn't even touch the info by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    "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.

  3. Re:On the plus side... by tlhIngan · · Score: 4, Informative

    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...

  4. Re:Unfortunately by operagost · · Score: 4, Informative

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 Your geek card has been revoked.

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