David Kern was fired from his
job at Varian Associates and took a job as head of engineering at Radiological
Associates, one of Varian’s competitors located in Sacramento, California.
Ironically, in his new job, Kern was responsible for maintaining and repairing
Varian radiological devices at hospitals and treatment centers in Northern
California. One of Varian’s technicians inadvertently left his laptop
computer at a Northern hospital in Sacramento after completing a service call,
and Kern found it.
Using a popular file transfer
software program called Laplink, Kern downloaded the contents of the found
computer onto his own laptop. The information contained many of Varian’s
trade secrets regarding its proprietary and confidential methods and protocols
for servicing the million dollar cancer treating therapy machines. However, he
later discovered that all of the information was encrypted.
Not wanting to a little thing
like encryption stand in his way, Kern recruited a Varian employee to steal a
security key from a Varian technician so he could unencrypt the data. He was
successful and printed out all of Varian’s trade secrets that were contained
on the computer.
He might have gotten away with
it but for one thing. He apparently was so pleased with himself, he couldn’t
keep his big mouth shut. He bragged of his exploits to numerous associates,
who notified Varian.
He pled guilty to theft of trade
secrets and having a big mouth. He was sentenced to one year in prison and
three years supervised release.[i]
[i] Department of Justice
sources and website; Carr, Chris; Morton, Jack; Furniss, Jerry, The
Economic Espionage Act: Bear Trap or Mousetrap, The Texas Intellectual
Property Law Journal, Vol. 8, No. 2, Winter 2000, pp. 192-193; the website
of attorney R. Mark Halligan.
Excerpt from the chapter: 
