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GE Engineer With Ties To China Accused of Stealing Power Plant Technology (thestreet.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TheStreet: General Electric stock was little changed on Friday, August 3, as a GE engineer with ties to China who has been accused of stealing proprietary power-turbine technology has been released on bond. Xiaoqing Zheng, 56, has been in custody since Wednesday when the FBI raided his home in Niskayuna, New York, near Albany. A federal judge on Thursday set a $100,000 bond; Zheng offered his family's home as collateral and was released on Friday. He was ordered to wear an electronic monitoring device and limit his travel, according to multiple media reports.
Zheng, who is a U.S. citizen, was hired by GE in 2008 to work as a principal engineer for the company's power division, according to an affidavit by an FBI agent filed in federal court in Albany. Zheng is "suspected of taking/stealing, on multiple occasions via sophisticated means, data files from GE's laboratories that contain GE's trade secret information involving turbine technology," the FBI said in its affidavit. He also took "elaborate means" to conceal the removal of GE data files. "The primary focus of this affidavit is Zheng's action in 2018 in which he encrypted GE data files containing trade secret information, and thereafter sent the trade secret information from his GE work computer to Zheng's personal e-mail address hidden in the binary code of a digital photograph via a process known as steganography," the FBI said. "Additionally, the secondary focus of this affidavit is Zheng's actions in 2014 in which he downloaded more than 19,000 files from GE's computer network onto an external storage device, believed by GE investigators to have been a personal thumb drive."
Zheng's attorney disputed the allegations, saying Zheng "transmitted information on his own patents to himself and to no one else."
Zheng, who is a U.S. citizen, was hired by GE in 2008 to work as a principal engineer for the company's power division, according to an affidavit by an FBI agent filed in federal court in Albany. Zheng is "suspected of taking/stealing, on multiple occasions via sophisticated means, data files from GE's laboratories that contain GE's trade secret information involving turbine technology," the FBI said in its affidavit. He also took "elaborate means" to conceal the removal of GE data files. "The primary focus of this affidavit is Zheng's action in 2018 in which he encrypted GE data files containing trade secret information, and thereafter sent the trade secret information from his GE work computer to Zheng's personal e-mail address hidden in the binary code of a digital photograph via a process known as steganography," the FBI said. "Additionally, the secondary focus of this affidavit is Zheng's actions in 2014 in which he downloaded more than 19,000 files from GE's computer network onto an external storage device, believed by GE investigators to have been a personal thumb drive."
Zheng's attorney disputed the allegations, saying Zheng "transmitted information on his own patents to himself and to no one else."
Zheng's attorney disputed the allegations, saying Zheng "transmitted information on his own patents to himself and to no one else."
My experience with giant corporations is that I sign away the rights to the things I invent for them as a condition of employment. "My" patents are at home, with documentation that they were all done on my own time, using my own equipment. And even that may be subject to litigation if the patents fall into the same type of things that I develop at work.
The only information he is entitled to relating to his patents are the patents themselves, as published.
https://patents.justia.com/search?q=Xiaoqing+Zheng+General+Electric
Otherwise he is running off with "work", which GE owns. And the patents are assigned to GE as a condition of his employment, so they aren't his either even if he is one of the authors.
Secondly, the employee disputes the charges, and frames his explanation in a credible way.
What's credible about it? If the rights to the patent are assigned to his employer, as they certainly are, then it's not really his patent at all. There's no legitimate reason for him to transfer any of the information to himself. If there were, he wouldn't have to use steganography. All he needs to do is write down the patent numbers if he wants to refer to the patents later as his work, which if he has no right to the patents, is all he has the right to do "with" them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If he was just using password protected zip files, I might be more inclined to believe his story, The fact that he was trying to hide what he was doing cast his story in a bad light.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.