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.

Comments

Not sure why this is illegal

[rsilvergun]

it seems like it should be a contract dispute, not a federal crime. Then again it does hurt rich people...

Re:Not sure why this is illegal

[b0s0z0ku]

It's an end-run around the fact that non-compete agreements are basically illegal in California. The employers can't win in a lawsuit, but (apparently) they can use Federal thugs to threaten ex-employees with prison time. This country is truly becoming a fucked up place...

Re: Not sure why this is illegal

[bdh]

If you look at the indictment, the accused supposedly took physical materials from Jawbone to Fitbit, including copies of market studies, supplier and pricing lists, design specifications for new products, and internal financial presentations. If I go to my employer's direct competitor, the development skills that I learned under my employer are portable, and he/she has no claim on them. Taking design specifications of a product under development out of the building, however, is not a skill transfer. It's theft.

"Stealing"?

[mi]

If I could have a dollar for every time an "insightful" post on Slashdot — since the times of Napster — lectured the audience, that it is not theft, if the victim still has his copy of whatever is allegedly "stolen"...

Acts occurred 2 years prior. Murder charge after d

[raymorris]

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.

Re:Trade secrets are intellectual property

[ShanghaiBill]

I would expect it is because trade secrets are a form of federally recognized and protected intellectual property, as are copyrights and patents.

The Justice Dept does not enforce copyrights or patents. If someone violates your patent, that is your problem, not the government's. You can sue, but you can't go to the police.

Here's the federal criminal statute

[raymorris]

This is the relevant criminal law, on the federal side:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/us...

The definition of Trade Secret is:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/de...

Re:Here's the federal criminal statute

[HornWumpus]

Hint: 'Accidently' posting any 'trade secrets' to the net before quitting renders them 'not secret', but watch the audit trails. Do it from the PHBs desk.

Don't tell your new boss the secrets, no fraud

[raymorris]

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.

Re:Don't tell your new boss the secrets, no fraud

[datavirtue]

I can't do it but execs can? Nah. It I know shit they need to make sure they keep me in their fold...otherwise...let the market sort it out.

Re:Don't tell your new boss the secrets, no fraud

[HornWumpus]

Write 'I don't agree' (somewhat legibly) on the confidentiality agreement/non-disclosure/non-compete signature line and hand it across the table. They NEVER check.

The contents of my brain are my property. The main problem aren't genuine 'trade secrets', it's that employers want to define completely standard approaches like 'iterative processes' as theirs. If you sign, you've agreed to that, they have shysters on staff, you can't afford to fight it.

for fitbit?

[Anonymous Coward]

imagine having to steal another company's secrets and commit crimes just to make THAT

Re:What am I missing

[Trailer Trash]

If Jawbone went out of business, doesn't that make all their confidentiality agreements null and void? If the agreement was with a company that no longer exists, how can anyone sue them for violating it?

Somebody is most likely still trying to get some money from the IP owned by Jawbone to help pay back creditors and stock holders.

Never seen a DVD or VHS? Criminal vs civil copyrig

[raymorris]

Have you never seen the FBI Warning at the beginning of every DVD or VHS? The FBI is part of DOJ.

  There are both civil and criminal copyright statues, very much like you can sue someone for taking your money in order to try to get some of it back, and the government can prosecute theft criminally. Just this week in the news a major star was suing their manager for allegedly stealing the celebrity's money. That civil suit, to recover the money, doesn't bar criminal prosecution if in fact a crime was committed.

Most copyright cases can be adequately handled by a civil case, and the FBI doesn't spend their resources on it if a civil suit will do instead. The FBI can and does criminally prosecute when the criminal activity justifies prosecution based on:
The scale and seriousness of the offense(s)
Criminal history of the offender(s)
Culpability of each offender
Availability of civil remedies
Likely outcome of the case
Whether the offender has simply ignored prior civil judgements
Other factors specific to each case

Page 7 of this document has an article for FBI agents on this topic:
https://www.justice.gov/usao/f...