AMD Points The Finger At Old Employees For Stealing 100K Documents

AMD filed a complaint yesterday alleging that four of its former employees—one former vice-president and three former managers—transferred sensitive AMD documents before joining competing graphics chip maker NVIDIA and then violated a “no-solicitation of employees” promise. The company alleges that Robert Feldstein, Manoo Desai, Nicolas Kociuk collectively downloaded over 100,000 files onto external hard drives in the six months before leaving the company. All three and another manager, Richard Hagen, were accused of recruiting AMD employees after leaving for NVIDIA.

The most senior person accused in AMD's complaint is Robert Feldstein, who was the vice president of strategic development at AMD until his departure for AMD's competitor. ExtremeTech notes that, “Feldstein was behind the work that landed AMD the Wii U... and Xbox Durango. He also worked closely with Microsoft during the Xbox 360′s development cycle and brought that contract to ATI prior to AMD’s acquisition.” In the complaint, AMD says that after Feldstein and Hagen left, they recruited Desai, who then recruited Kociuk “and perhaps additional AMD employees to leave AMD for competitor NVIDIA.”

AMD says it forensically analyzed the former employees' computers and found additional evidence that “Desai and Kociuk conspired with each other to misappropriate AMD's confidential, proprietary, and/or trade secret information; and/or to intentionally access AMD's protected computers, without authorization and/or in a way that exceeded their authorized access.”

The chip maker asked for injunctive relief from the court in its complaint, hoping to recover the files which it says it has forensic evidence of the four defendants taking. It also filed a restraining order against the four employees, which was granted. The order requires Feldstein, Desai, and Kociuk to retain all of their AMD property and preserve all computers in their ownership for forensic evaluation. Mr. Hagen was only ordered to refrain from recruiting anymore AMD employees. [ARSTechnica]

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