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The Courts Google

Google Sues Ex-Engineer In Texas Over Leaked Pixel Chip Secrets (reuters.com) 35

Posted by BeauHD from the cease-and-desist dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Google has sued one of its former engineers in Texas federal court, accusing him of stealing trade secrets related to its chip designs and sharing them publicly on the internet. The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday (PDF), said that Harshit Roy "touted his dominion" over the secrets in social media posts, tagging competitors and making threatening statements to the company including "I need to take unethical means to get what I am entitled to" and "remember that empires fall and so will you."

Google hired Roy in 2020 to develop computer chips used in Google Pixel devices like smartphones. Google said in the lawsuit that Roy resigned in February and moved from Bangalore, India to the United States in August to attend a doctorate program at the University of Texas at Austin. According to the complaint, Roy began posting confidential Google information to his X account later that month along with "subversive text" directed at the company, such as "don't expect me to adhere to any confidentiality agreement." The posts included photographs of internal Google documents with specifications for Pixel processing chips.

The lawsuit said that Roy ignored Google's takedown requests and has posted additional trade secrets to X and LinkedIn since October. Google alleged that Roy tagged competitors Apple and Qualcomm in some of the posts, "presumably to maximize the potential harm of his disclosure." Google's complaint also said that several news outlets have published stories with confidential details about Google's devices based on the information that Roy leaked. Google asked the court for an unspecified amount of monetary damages and court orders blocking Roy from using or sharing its secrets.

Google Sues Ex-Engineer In Texas Over Leaked Pixel Chip Secrets More | Reply

Google Sues Ex-Engineer In Texas Over Leaked Pixel Chip Secrets

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  • If this guy admitted to stealing company secrets and posting them, what company would want to hire him? With luck, he'll be permanently shadow banned by companies.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by ClickOnThis ( 137803 )

      If this guy admitted to stealing company secrets and posting them, what company would want to hire him? With luck, he'll be permanently shadow banned by companies.

      Sometimes, being a crook seems to help in the USA, or at least not matter a bit. Depends on who your friends are, or what offices you have held.

      • This post did not deserve a downmod. Incredibly insightful, actually. The point is that extreme financial success or winning a national level election DOES actually confer some perks. Love or hate the idea, down here in hard reality, these things grant a person some licenses that the rest of us dont get. The issue here is that the guy in question does not fall into either category. He is screwed.

        • Exactly. How will we explain this to future generations? What values will they learn?

          • Future generations will not be particularly surprised or outraged to learn that emperors, kings, national leaders, military leaders and the extremely wealthy can do things that normal people can’t.

            • Of course. But the idea that the US presidency has become such a thing is what I fear.

              • It was always like that. The POTUS isn’t a king but always had powers and immunities that normal folks didn’t. Some of it was formal and some was just tradition and mostly-unspoken-rules. The Supreme Court recently made it much more formal by declaring the POTUS to be explicitly above-the-law in most cases. That’s a result of the presidential shenanigans of the past 10 years or so. Conservatives will blame DEI and immigrants, liberals will blame Trump. Whatever the case, here we are. The p

            • Like walk down the street without significant fear? Oh, wait, maybe not in major US cities...

              Or speak their mind without being denied access to media? Oh, wait, not if your speech sufficiently offends someone in power...

              Or, you know not going along... Emperors, kings, national leaders, military leaders and the extremely wealthy might not be able to walk the streets without harassment, but they usually can do that other thing, often because they own or control the media, either directly or indirectly.

    • Reminds me of the time a Coca Cola employee tried to sell company secrets to Pepsi. They ratted on him and the FBI arrested him.

      https://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/jul/07/marketingandpr.drink [theguardian.com]

    • He can probably forget ever getting a position anywhere near confidential information. Not just in the private sector, but in the public sector as well.

    • Unless he married into citizenship I assume he's getting deported.

      Idiot had Google on his resume and just needed to survive Trump's administration in his doctoral program, then he could have joined the rest of his techbro friends in the wealth he felt entitled too. Now he's likely completely screwed.

    • Perhaps UT Austin will decline to permit this confessed criminal to attend there. Fair enough.

  • Humble much? Why would the companies that make the best and the distant-second-best mobile SoCs care about the secrets of the company making the 5th best mobile SoCs?

    • > Why would the companies that make the best and the distant-second-best mobile SoCs care about the secrets of the company making the 5th best mobile SoCs?

      To make sure they stay 5th.

  • His name is Harshit. I am the only one laughing?

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