A former vice president of Hewlett-Packard's printing division has been indicted by federal prosecutors for allegedly sharing with HP confidential information from his previous employer.
First reported by Wired, the indictment was filed Friday in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif. As director of sales and business development in IBM's printing division in March 2006, Atul Malhotra allegedly requested confidential information about IBM pricing. Just two months later, Malhotra took the position of vice president of HP's printing division.
In the indictment, prosecutors say Malhotra e-mailed the IBM information, marked "confidential," to an unnamed HP senior vice president on July 25, 2006, and again to another HP senior vice president two days later.
He was fired shortly thereafter, in September 2006, according to HP.
"The activity with which Malhotra is charged was in direct violation of clear HP policies, including HP Standards of Business Conduct," the company said in a statement. "HP detected this activity, conducted an internal investigation, terminated Malhotra's employment from HP, and reported the activity to appropriate enforcement agencies and to IBM. HP has cooperated fully with the government's investigation."
Established defense contractor iRobot has prevailed in courtroom battles against Robotic FX, effectively gaining an unconditional surrender from the upstart military-industrial wannabe.
An iRobot-supplied SUGV helps a pair of soldiers clear a building during an evaluation exercise early in 2007.
(Credit: U.S. Army)Late on Friday, Burlington, Mass.-based iRobot said that two federal courts had ruled in its favor. The U.S. District Court in Massachusetts determined that Robotic FX and founder Jameel Ahed--a former iRobot employee--had misused trade secrets belonging to iRobot, while the U.S. District Court in Northern Alabama determined that Robotic FX had deliberately infringed on patents.
As if that weren't enough, a related settlement requires the disbanding of Robotic FX, with certain assets to be retained by iRobot, and the banning of Ahed from competitive activities in the robotics industry for five years, according to iRobot. As of Sunday morning, the Robotic FX Web site was pointing to an iRobot page.
For a number of years, iRobot has been supplying the Pentagon with its Packbot technology--small, tracked robots that have been instrumental in locating and neutralizing explosive devices in Iraq. The company--best known for its Roomba, Scooba, and Looj gadgets for consumers--is also working on a related system known as SUGV (for small unmanned ground vehicle) as part of the Army's Future Combat Systems initiative.
A few months back, Allsip, Ill.-based Robotic FX had won a major contract with the U.S. Army to supply just those sorts of robots. But in a harbinger of the court rulings, the Army just days ago turned that contract--a $286 million, five-year deal to crank out up to 3,000 robots--over to iRobot. It plans to deliver the first 101 of those new robots "for urgent deployment."
In total, iRobot says it will have spent about $2.9 million on the dispute.
For the most thorough coverage of the months of legal wrangling between iRobot and Robotic FX, including links to the Massachusetts and Alabama rulings, check out Xconomy.com.
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