Legal Question in Technology Law in Louisiana

Using compay software for personal side projects

I know of someone who has used their company's computers and software to develop applications for a personal ''outside'' ventures. They were paid well for these side projects. To make things worse, they're a government contractor so they used government owned resources to create these programs for personal profit. The projects did not have anything to do with internal sensitive material. But this employee needed to use the company's legacy applications and hardware to develop the software for a 3rd party.

What type of crime is this and what kinds of penalties would they be facing if I were to ''blow the whistle'' on them? This occurred within the the Space & Warfare division of this company. I'm concerned about the fallout and bad PR that could result from this if it became public that an employee was developing software for another company while using internal resources of a publicly traded company with huge governement contracts. This may be a matter for the FBI to investigate as well as the company conducting its own internal investigation.

I'm wondering what else this employee may have done if they felt comfortable doing this.

Thank you in advance for taking the time to answer this.


Asked on 3/04/09, 11:03 pm

2 Answers from Attorneys

David Anderson Anderson Business Law LLC

Re: Using compay software for personal side projects

There may well be Federal & State law violation, in addition to violation of internal company policies and contract breach issues.

I would need much more information for a thorough legal analysis.

Are you employed by this company?

Have you reported or threatened to report this individual to date?

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Answered on 3/04/09, 11:06 pm
Johm Smith tom's

Re: Using compay software for personal side projects

This is a bigger question that I can really answer here with the information provided. It sounds like a wide variety of state and federal laws have possibly been violated. There are also several different ways to handle this type of situation. I suggest you give me a call or we could meet in our office Magazine Street by appointment.

David

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Answered on 3/04/09, 11:33 pm


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