Corporate Espionage Defined
Corporate espionage occurs when an insider or third party accesses, steals, and/or uses a company's confidential and proprietary information without authorization to secure a commercial advantage for another company, individual, or state actor. It is estimated that corporate espionage causes billions of dollars in economic damages annually.
Businesses and individuals can face significant civil and criminal penalties for corporate espionage — even if they are unaware of the problematic conduct. For example, a business could face liability if one of its employees or contractors uses data or documents that the individual misappropriated from another company, even if the employer was unaware of the conduct.
Increased Corporate Espionage in the United States
The digitization of the workplace, greater worker mobility, expanded work-from-home arrangements, and inexpensive data storage are creating unprecedented challenges to businesses in maintaining the security of their data, trade secrets, and other proprietary information. Company executives, employees, contractors, vendors, and others with access to a business's confidential data and documents are increasingly copying vast troves of data to personal devices and accounts without the company's knowledge.
The magnitude of this problem is frequently overlooked because corporate resources often focus on external cybersecurity threats, such as hackers and scammers.
The data demonstrate that incidents of corporate espionage have sharply increased in recent years. Even companies that unwittingly receive stolen data may face enormous financial and reputational harm, while companies whose data is stolen may lose competitive advantage and market share.
How We Can Help
Corporate espionage investigations and litigation are highly time-sensitive and require the combined efforts of attorneys in areas such as labor and employment, intellectual property, business litigation, white-collar criminal, antitrust, cybersecurity, and privacy. These matters typically require digital forensics as well — an uncommon skillset.
We draw on the substantial resources of our national attorney team and technology professionals to help clients understand, scope, triage, and remediate the damage resulting from all types of economic spying on an expedited basis.
Our professionals provide the precise legal and technical guidance clients need to effectively address their current vulnerabilities and help to mitigate future threats. This includes working directly with our clients' operations, IT, human resources, and other stakeholders to not only handle corporate espionage investigations and litigation, but to also strengthen internal policies, practices, and other protections, such as confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements, and provide training to mitigate risk associated with corporate espionage.
Firm Events
06.06.24
Navigating the Intricacies of Corporate Espionage: A Focus on Poaching and Raiding
Articles + Publications
01.03.24
5 Steps for Preventing and Mitigating Corporate Espionage
Press Coverage
10.13.23
Troutman Pepper Launches Corp. Espionage Response Team
Press Coverage
10.13.23
Wake Up Call: Buffalo Bills' Top Lawyer Fired Over Relationship
Articles + Publications
10.12.23
A Tale of Two Startups: Intense Competition Leads to Attempted Corporate Espionage
Press Coverage
10.12.23
Atlanta Partner to Co-Lead Troutman Pepper's New Corporate Espionage Response Team