A former Rockwell Automation Inc. employee accused of stealing trade secrets from the company was acquitted by U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman this week.
Tan Liu was charged in 2016 with 12 counts of stealing trade secrets from Rockwell during the last few weeks he worked at the company in 2014. He worked at the company from March 31, 2014 to Nov. 4, 2014 as a senior embedded software engineer.
A grand jury indictment said he downloaded approximately 2,500 files related to proprietary computer code as he sought employment at SK Hynix and Apple.
Liu’s attorneys argued the files he possessed were legitimately accessed as he did work for Rockwell and that he continued to complete his work until his employment ended. They argued the case was different than others where employees had returned from a medical leave only to download a company’s files in an effort to compete with them in the future.
“Liu had the Rockwell data because he repeatedly worked from home,” Michelle Jacobs, Liu’s attorney wrote in a memo to the court. “Indeed, Mr. Liu was even working from home and uploading a finished project to the Rockwell computer system the night before he was unexpectedly terminated. There was no evidence that he ever took the data outside his home. Thus, the material that Mr. Liu had at home was being used to benefit, not to injure, Rockwell.”
Adelman sided with Liu after a three day trial this week and found him not guilty.
