HP’s former vice president of imaging and printing services, Atul Malhotra, 42, faces 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine after he pleaded guilty of stealing IBM secrets and passing it on to Hewlett Packard.
Malhotra who is of Indian origin and worked at IBM for nearly a decade until April 2006 as sales director in the Global Services division, admitted that he accessed and copied confidential information from his previous job.
After joining HP he passed the secrets, relating to IBM product costs and materials to two senior HP vice presidents in e-mail messages with the subject line “For Your Eyes Only – confidential.”
Prosecutors said Malhotra claimed in the e-mails that the data would give HP’s sales teams an edge over IBM in determining pricing on prospective deals.
Malhotra’s defense lawyer, John Vandevelde, said he plans to ask the court to consider probation instead of jail time for his client. According to him:
The trade secrets involved had limited value and Mr. Malhotra’s error in sharing them in response to requests from his bosses at Hewlett-Packard had no impact on any business transactions.
Both IBM and HP cooperated fully in the case.
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