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Former AMD employees accused of stealing vital documents for Nvidia

A group of former AMD employees have been accused of stealing information and passing it onto rival company Nvidia.

Bob Feldstein, the man who holds great influence when trying to put AMD tech into next-gen Xbox and PlayStation consoles, is amongst the accused. He is joined by Manoo Desai, Richard Hagen and Nicolas Kociuk.

As reported by Ars Technica, the lawsuit suggests "AMD has uncovered evidence that three of the four defendants - Feldstein, Desai and Kociuk - transferred to external storage devices trade secrets and information in the days prior to their leaving AMD to work for Nvidia."

It is thought the group gathered over 100,000 documents between them.

"The names of identified and transferred files match identically or very closely to the names of files on their AMD systems that include obviously confidential, proprietary and/or trade secret materials relating to developing and/or highly confidential business strategy."

Feldstein apparently connected two external storage devices to his machine during his final day with AMD.

"Onto those storage devices, three highly confidential files - two licensing agreements with significant customers and a document outlining proposed strategies to AMD's strategic licensing - were transferred," the lawsuit declares.

Manoo Desai was said to be engaging in similar activity, connecting an external drive to her machine before leaving the company.

"A folder called Perforce - which is the name of an AMD internal database containing the confidential technological work and development of AMD process and product - was created on the external device," it is suggested.

The defendants are also accused of luring staff from AMD to Nvidia. All face charges of Misappropriation of Trade Secrets, Unfair Competition, Violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Breach of the Employee's Duty of Loyalty, Breach of Contract and Conspiracy.

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Nick Akerman

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