Intel Sues Oregon Engineer Who Left For Microsoft, Allegedly Taking Trade Secrets With Him

Intel sued a former Oregon employee last week, alleging he took trade secrets with him when he bolted for Microsoft and used the information to gain an advantage in subsequent business negotiations with Intel. From a report: The engineer, Varun Gupta, worked for Intel for a decade before leaving for Microsoft in January 2020, according to the suit. He allegedly loaded Intel trade secrets onto two USB drives before quitting and later accessed them on his Microsoft-issued laptop. Gupta could not immediately be reached for comment. Intel and Microsoft are longtime partners and, increasingly, rivals as Microsoft develops its own chip engineering capabilities. Microsoft is preparing to open a big new engineering hub in Hillsboro, near Intel’s Oregon research factories, and has hired a former Intel vice president to help lead it. In this case, though, the litigation indicates Intel and Microsoft worked together to investigate the incident. Intel’s complaint claims that Gupta had denied knowing where the one of the USB drives was, but later turned it over to Microsoft for analysis. He claimed to have discarded a second USB drive that allegedly contained Intel secrets, according to the litigation. The suit asserts that Microsoft determined Gupta had plugged the USB drives into his Microsoft-issued laptop. “In his new role at Microsoft, Gupta used the confidential information and trade secrets he misappropriated from Intel, deploying that information in head-to-head negotiations with Intel concerning customized product design and pricing for significant volumes of Xeon processors,” Intel alleged in Friday’s filing.