Former Intel Engineer Sentenced for Stealing Trade Secrets for Microsoft (tomshardware.com) 37
After leaving a nearly 10-year position as a product marketing engineer at Intel, Varun Gupta was charged with possessing trade secrets. He was facing a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release, according to Oregon's U.S. Attorney's Office.
Portland's KGW reports: While still employed at Intel, Varun Gupta downloaded about 4,000 files, which included trade secrets and proprietary materials, from his work computer to personal portable hard drives, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Oregon. While working for Microsoft, between February and July 2020, Gupta accessed and used information during ongoing negotiations with Intel regarding chip purchases, according to a sentencing memo. Some of the information containing trade secrets included a PowerPoint presentation that referenced Intel's pricing strategy with another major customer, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Oregon in a sentencing memo.
Intel raised concerns in 2020, and Microsoft and Intel launched a joint investigation, the sentencing memo says. Intel filed a civil lawsuit in February 2021 that resulted in Gupta being ordered to pay $40,000.
Tom's Hardware summarizes the trial: Oregon Live reports that the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney William Narus, sought an eight-month prison term for Gupta. Narus spoke about Gupta's purposeful and repeated access to secret documents. Eight months of federal imprisonment was sought as Gupta repetitively abused his cache of secret documents, according to the prosecutor.
For the defense, attorney David Angeli described Gupta's actions as a "serious error in judgment." Mitigating circumstances, such as Gupta's permanent loss of high-level employment opportunities in the industry, and that he had already paid $40,000 to settle a civil suit brought by Intel, were highlighted.
U.S. District Judge Amy Baggio concluded the court hearing by delivering a balance between the above adversarial positions. Baggio decided that Gupta should face a two-year probationary sentence [and pay a $34,472 fine — before heading back to France]... The ex-tech exec and his family have started afresh in La Belle France, with eyes on a completely new career in the wine industry. According to the report, Gupta is now studying for a qualification in vineyard management, while aiming to work as a technical director in the business.
Portland's KGW reports: While still employed at Intel, Varun Gupta downloaded about 4,000 files, which included trade secrets and proprietary materials, from his work computer to personal portable hard drives, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Oregon. While working for Microsoft, between February and July 2020, Gupta accessed and used information during ongoing negotiations with Intel regarding chip purchases, according to a sentencing memo. Some of the information containing trade secrets included a PowerPoint presentation that referenced Intel's pricing strategy with another major customer, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Oregon in a sentencing memo.
Intel raised concerns in 2020, and Microsoft and Intel launched a joint investigation, the sentencing memo says. Intel filed a civil lawsuit in February 2021 that resulted in Gupta being ordered to pay $40,000.
Tom's Hardware summarizes the trial: Oregon Live reports that the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney William Narus, sought an eight-month prison term for Gupta. Narus spoke about Gupta's purposeful and repeated access to secret documents. Eight months of federal imprisonment was sought as Gupta repetitively abused his cache of secret documents, according to the prosecutor.
For the defense, attorney David Angeli described Gupta's actions as a "serious error in judgment." Mitigating circumstances, such as Gupta's permanent loss of high-level employment opportunities in the industry, and that he had already paid $40,000 to settle a civil suit brought by Intel, were highlighted.
U.S. District Judge Amy Baggio concluded the court hearing by delivering a balance between the above adversarial positions. Baggio decided that Gupta should face a two-year probationary sentence [and pay a $34,472 fine — before heading back to France]... The ex-tech exec and his family have started afresh in La Belle France, with eyes on a completely new career in the wine industry. According to the report, Gupta is now studying for a qualification in vineyard management, while aiming to work as a technical director in the business.
I do not get the stupidity of these people (Score:2)
In a modern IT infrastructure, you get logs as to who downloaded what, and you will have alerting on that because one thing to catch is some user machine getting hacked and the attackers accessing a lot of files.
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That's a $35K fine and 2 years probation on top of whatever civil damages Intel can muster.
This sort of conviction goes on your record, and as an employer it won't be smart to hire someone who has a criminal history of deliberately stealing trade secrets to use for the benefit of a future employer.
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Well, at least it will bring him to his knees ( as a roofer)
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"whatever civil damages Intel can muster."
$40,000, according to the summary posted.
So he still (apparently) made a profit, I guess.
Re: I do not get the stupidity of these people (Score:2)
Can I guess better pricing from Intel, out of respect for a fellow criminal?
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But Microsoft (Score:2)
Would not exist if it wasnt for theft of someone elses intellectual property.
I see no reason to expect the global socio-economic collapse to retard.
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Would not exist if it wasnt for theft of someone elses intellectual property.
If they took someone's trade secrets to create their existence -- they did it before the Economic Espionage Act of 1996 was passed into law that created the crime of "trade secret misappropriation". Because Microsoft Windows already existed before 1996.
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If pricing strategy is a trade secret (Score:2)
Why do economists still pretend prices are determined by supply and demand?
Re: If pricing strategy is a trade secret (Score:2)
ChatGPT said: ... the reply you got is dressed up in jargon, but it can definitely be challenged.
Hereâ(TM)s how you could push back clearly in Slashdot style (plain ASCII, no Unicode):
Re: If pricing strategy is a trade secret (+1)
The thermodynamics analogy sounds clever but it skips the point.
Yes, prices are influenced (slightly) by supply and demand in aggregate, but that doesnâ(TM)t mean any individual price is simply "set by the market." In practice, firms actively manage and manipulate prices
Re: If pricing strategy is a trade secret (Score:2)
Why not give up on the traditional economics model that says that prices are a signal of physical supply and demand?
Why not admit that Fischer Black in "Noise" makes important observations with implications for inflation policy (i.e. just adapt because control won't work?)?
"we might define an efficient market as one in which price is within a factor of 2 of value, i.e., the price is more than half of value and less than twice value.11 The factor of 2 is arbitrary, of course. Intuitively, though, it seems re
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Just making a physical product and selling without any sort of strategy.. good luck on that. Maybe you can get away with it more easily when dealing with software but not physical
Re: If pricing strategy is a trade secret (Score:2)
How much would you like to bet that margin is the biggest factor determining Intel's prices? Why else keep it a trade secret?
Thus what kind of policy changes would we see if we all admitted prices are really about supply and demand for money itself, not signals of physical supply and demand of whatever the price us for?
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Are you trying to argue companies should not be able to make a profit? You set price based on a point you believe you can maximize profit. That takes into account competition, size of the market, scarcity of the resource, costs of production... sometimes it's the pricing strategy that gives your company the
Re: If pricing strategy is a trade secret (Score:2)
If Intel has different prices for different customers, how much more of a factor in the final price is the psychological assessment of how much Microsoft (in this case) is willing to pay, than the costs to Intel of actual manufacturing?
Instead of being a signal to Microsoft of how chips are oversupplied, can Intel use their pricing strategy to lead their customers, and the useful idiots on slashdot defending their prices, into thinking supply is constrained, when in fact supply is not an issue, only Intel's
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Pricing strategy is important to every business. Competitors having that strategy available to them potentially harms long term profits. It's as simple as that. As for different costs for different customers, that is very commonplace and is the result of negotiation.
Are you trying to defend the guy who took the data?
Re: If pricing strategy is a trade secret (Score:2)
"Foundation: The LOOP and arbitrage are basic implications of price theory, according to SCIRP Open Access.
Questions: A failure of the LOOP raises questions about wealth and utility maximization, which are cornerstones of economic theory, according to ScienceDirect.com. "
If law of one price falls, just how arbitrary are prices, and what are the implications for attempts to control inflation?
What if this guy did us all a favor by exposing an explicit violation of the Law of One Price, and we should all take
A danger going forward (Score:4, Interesting)
if ls Presidenta succeeds in getting a piece of Intel for the Fed. Gov., what is to stop his alleged administration from feeding any secrets they get from the rest of the industry to Intel? They needn't be technical secrets, financials of competitors will do enough to tip the scales toward Intel. And who would stop them? The Justice Dept. who has already sold their soul to la Presidenta and his goons?
This is yet another part of the deep state la Presidenta and his goons are setting up.
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if ls Presidenta succeeds in getting a piece of Intel for the Fed. Gov., what is to stop his alleged administration from feeding any secrets they get from the rest of the industry to Intel? They needn't be technical secrets, financials of competitors will do enough to tip the scales toward Intel. And who would stop them? The Justice Dept. who has already sold their soul to la Presidenta and his goons?
This is yet another part of the deep state la Presidenta and his goons are setting up.
I'd be more concerned about what secrets from Intel are going to be fed to the Russians and Chinese... deliberately or accidentally.
They US govt isn't always the best with infosec and the Republicans themselves are downright terrible at it. The only thing saving them is the fact that many of them are too old or inept to use technology.
China and Russia are so far behind because we've protected certain secrets, thats why they can't make a plane or high speed train without importing most of the component
The what? (Score:2)
What's a "product marketing engineer"?
Re: The what? (Score:2)
Perhaps they engineer prices, actively violating the Law of One Price, which if it doesn't hold, invalidates all of economic rational price theory?
ChatGPT expands: "The Law of One Price says identical goods should sell for the same price in efficient markets. In reality, firms segment markets, use confidential pricing, and negotiate different deals. That means the law does not hold, and if it does not hold, then the foundations of rational price theory are shaky."
Re: The what? (Score:2)
What if you read "Noise" by Fischer Black and pondered the implications of putting margins of error of plus 100%, minus 50% on observable prices? Would trying to control prices by setting interest rates still make sense?
"it is not clear what is gained by controlling the price level. If business cycles are caused by real factors rather than by things that are affected by the rate of inflation, then many of the reasons for controlling inflation vanish." -- "Noise"
Crook goes free. (Score:2)
Crime pays.
How is this mitigating? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Mitigating circumstances, such as Gupta's permanent loss of high-level employment opportunities in the industry"
How is the shame of doing something wrong and the ensuing backlash a mitigating circumstance? If someone robs a bank and then finds it hard to get a job because everyone looks down on him, is that a reason for reduce the criminal penalty?
Re: How is this mitigating? (Score:2)
Have you looked at the Federal Reserve's Enforcement page? Why is the penalty for the last one listed at time of writing a simple ban on working for other banks, when the crime was a teller stealing funds? In short, isn't reducing the penalty to "you'll never work in this industry again" from actual jail time under existing law widespread in banking?
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How is the shame of doing something wrong and the ensuing backlash a mitigating circumstance?
The shame is not especially, the public shame of it forcing him to change careers is. If the goal is to punish him, and he's already been punished, then there's no reason why that should not be a mitigating circumstance as the goal has already been at least partially achieved.