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6 Fitbit Employees Charged With Stealing Trade Secrets From Jawbone (mercurynews.com)
Six current and former Fitbit employees were charged in a federal indictment Thursday filed in San Jose for allegedly being in possession of trade secrets stolen from competitor Jawbone, according to information from the Department of Justice. From a report: The indictment charges the six people -- Katherine Mogal, 52, of San Francisco; Rong Zhang, 45, of El Cerrito; Jing Qi Weiden, 39, of San Jose; Ana Rosario, 33, of Pacifica; Patrick Narron, 41, of Boulder Creek; and Patricio Romano, 37, of Calabasas -- with violating confidentiality agreements they had signed as former employees of Jawbone after they accepted employment with Fitbit, according to an announcement from Acting U.S. Attorney Alex G. Tse and Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent in Charge Ryan L. Spradlin. San Francisco-based companies Fitbit and Jawbone were competitors in making wearable fitness trackers until Jawbone, once valued at $3.2B, went out of business in 2017. Each of the defendants worked for Jawbone for at least one year between May 2011 and April 2015, and had signed a confidentiality agreement with the company, according to the Department of Justice.
The acts in the indictment occurred in 2015.
Can one be charged with a crime after the victim is gone?
Every murder case ever says yes.
Employees can do a couple of things to avoid a criminal (and unethical) act when they go to work for a competitor:
Before leaving, don't artificially access or store secrets that you don't already know. Especially, don't FRAUDULENTLY gain access to secrets that aren't part of your job requirements.
Don't tell your new company secrets from your old company. What is a secret? Basically, it's anything the old company makes an effort to keep confidential.
If you do reveal secrets, some people at the new company might like that, and some more insightful people may recognize that means you'll still THEIR secrets to the next company, so you can't be trusted. Sometimes it might make sense to say something like "I take my job here seriously and would never reveal our secrets to a competitor. It wouldn't be right for me to break confidentiality of my former employer, just like I'd never violate your trust."
For myself, I like to learn new things, expanding my knowledge and experience with each job. For that reason, I'm unlikely to ever go work for a direct competitor. Instead, I'll move from working on the security of Rackspace's network to a new job working on making sure the F-35 doesn't get hacked. I'll expand my knowledge, and since it's not a direct competitor, trade secrets from my old job won't be much of an issue.