A tier one automotive supplier suspected that an engineer was stealing proprietary processes recently developed during an intensive R&D effort and selling intellectual property to a competitor in China.  The supplier became suspicious when the Chinese competitor starting undercutting bids with the technology that took many years to develop.

In house counsel contacted the Center for Computer Forensics and discussed their theory of who may have stolen the information whereupon the engineer’s computer and PDA were sent to the Center for Computer Forensics.  We sat down with counsel and the engineering manager to create a search strategy based on keywords.

The Center for Computer Forensics was able to find e-mail correspondence, copies of the patented process and other incriminating data that proved the supplier’s theory about the engineer in question.