GEO CRIME: Cisco Sues Ex-Employees Over Alleged Trade Secrets Theft

GEO CRIME: Cisco Sues Ex-Employees Over Alleged Trade Secrets Theft By: David Glovin at [email protected], Peter Blumberg, Joe Schneider via GEO´ Málaga Technology Centre Bloomberg reports that Cisco Systems Inc. sued three former senior employees whom it accused of stealing thousands of files containing confidential information when they defected to a competitor.

Shortly after resigning their jobs at Cisco this year, the three men joined an unidentified company that competes “in the IP telephony, headset, video, and collaboration space,” according to the complaint.

Cisco claims that Wilson Chung, who was one of its principal engineers, downloaded more than 3,000 internal documents containing trade secrets, including information about the company’s contributions to 5G technology and its design specification for a video-conferencing prototype, before he left in February. Chung is accused of recruiting another Cisco engineer, James He, to join the competitor. At that point, He started photographing confidential Cisco documents with his iPhone and copying other company records and emails, according to the complaint filed Monday in federal court in San Jose, California. Cisco said that Jedd Williams, who was one of its sales executives, sought employment with the same competitor, telling one of its executives in an email that he could “hit the ground running” using “a play I drove VERY successfully at Cisco … and a play that I’d like to repeat again.” In mid-October, on the same day he uploaded 12 Cisco sales forecasting spreadsheets, he announced he was leaving the company to work at his church and focus on personal issues, according to the complaint. “Mr. Williams joined the same competitor shortly thereafter.” To contact the editors resposible for this article David Glovin at [email protected], Peter Blumberg, Joe Schneider ©2019 Bloomberg L.P. More at: https://www.bloomberg.com/europe Cisco HQ Image