Computer-Enabled Theft of Intellectual Property

Digital property is easy to copy and steal, and the temptation is often irresistible to employees looking to boost their standing in their next job. Our experienced digital forensic examiners have detected such digital theft when the proprietary data are sent to personal email or the future employer via web-mail or other file transfer, or are surreptitiously copied onto iPods, thumb drives or other removable media. Stroz Friedberg has performed scores of expert examinations of computers in theft of trade secret cases in support of litigation against ex-employees and their new employers. Not only can our digital forensics examiners often recover evidence of the unauthorized transfer, but they have uncovered digital artifacts that bear on the wrongdoer’s mens rea, including by showing that the unauthorized actions were taken in the wee hours of a weekend morning or that the wrongdoer attempted to cover his tracks by attempting to delete or wipe evidence of the transfer. In other cases, Stroz Friedberg has successfully helped defend theft of trade secret cases by proving that the data were not, in fact, exfiltrated, or that the company that hired the ex-employee had the data in its network in the normal course of business prior to the ex-employee being hired. In yet a third class of cases, where the company that has received the stolen data seeks to cooperate with the company from which the data was stolen, Stroz Friedberg has acted as a neutral expert and used digital forensics to identify and permanently eradicate all instances of the stolen intellectual property. In such cases, Stroz Friedberg has helped counsel for both sides craft simple and practical protocols for the identification and eradication of the contested intellectual property.