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AMD Files Suit Against Former Employees For Alleged Document Theft

Posted by Soulskill on from the corporate-espionage-never-goes-out-of-style dept.

New submitter massivepanic writes "AMD has filed (and been granted) a request for immediate injunctive relief against multiple former employees that it alleges stole thousands of confidential documents. Named in the complaint (PDF) are Robert Feldstein, Manoo Desai, Nicholas Kociuk, and Richard Hagen. All four left AMD to work at Nvidia in the past year. The loss of Feldstein was particularly noteworthy, as he'd been the head of AMD's console initiatives for years. Feldstein was behind the work that landed AMD the Wii U, PS4, and Xbox Durango. He also worked closely with Microsoft during the Xbox 360s development cycle and brought that contract to ATI prior to AMD's acquisition."

2 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. Forensics: doing it wrong by LMariachi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    “The court has ordered that the named defendants [...] prepare their computers and storage devices for forensic evaluation, and refrain from taking any action that would obfuscate the location of said devices or the data contained therein.”

    Isn’t that a contradiction? That’s like CSI calling you up and telling you “We’re coming over next week, so make sure you prepare the crime scene for our arrival.”

  2. Re:I kinda doubt it here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    My guess is this isn't an orchestrated defection. My guess is it is one of two things:

    1) Some morons figured that they could make it big doing this, stole the documents on their own, and went over to nVidia. Perhaps this is even a result of a tip from nVidia.

    2) This is a smokescreen on AMD's part, to try and keep these guys away from nVidia.

    I just don't find it likely that nVidia would buy them off to do this. Too much to lose, not enough to gain. While they might want the people, which is totally legal, the tech isn't worth the risk.

    I've worked with 2 of those people in my past life. One thing I'll say for sure is that these are absolutely no morons we're talking about. #2 is clearly the case. I remember the HR legal debrief person during the exit interview is a complete dick, making threats even though you have done nothing wrong, with all the scare tactics BS, asking over and over again if you were going to be joining NVidia. They try whatever they could to find out who you were going to be working for, even though you have complete right not to disclose. The guy did mention at one point that "it's a free country and you can work anywhere in the world you want". Yeah, sure, do I really need you to tell me that, jerk!? They're panicking because these are key people with years of experience at a company joining a rival.

    Now I'm wondering if these people get fired by NVidia, maybe they should work as 3rd party contractors, consulting for NVidia just to mess with AMD.