Legal Question in Technology Law in Missouri

Illegal use of software by customer and what do do

An employee of mine was solicited by one of my

customers he was writing an application for and

since went to work for them full time.

I have reason to believe that he took the source

code for the application he was working on for this

customer, made changes and implemented them at this

company. The customer does not own the source code

so this is illegal.

If I ''subpoena'' the computers, can I legally install

software on them to analyse what was deleted to see

if a more recent version of my software was

installed based on when my former employee quit? In

other words I have software that will analyse a hard

disk to see if files were deleted. Can I legally do

this?

Thanks


Asked on 3/02/02, 7:05 pm

2 Answers from Attorneys
Bruce Burdick Burdick Law Firm

Re: Illegal use of software by customer and what do do

Yes. Your lawyer should know how to accomplish this, if you have a competent lawyer. Basically, a mirror of the subject's hard drive is obtained by a forensics expert and the mirror is then examined. That leaves the subject's hard drive totally unaffected but totally copied. The forensics expert would be held to confidentiality except for the analysis for trade secret misappropriation & copyright infringement you allege occured. This is now a pretty routine discovery technique since most of the really damaging evidence is now found in emails and on hard disks.

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Answered on 3/03/02, 12:52 am
Todd Epp Abourezk & Epp Law Offices

Re: Illegal use of software by customer and what do do

I guess I would back up one step. You would first need to file a lawsuit. Possible causes of action might be theft, copyright infringement, violation of duty of loyalty, etc. Then you could do what you propose. But it will take some time once the lawsuit is filed to get there.

Best regards,

Todd D. Epp, Esq.

Admitted in Kansas, South Dakota, and Western Federal District of Missouri

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Answered on 3/03/02, 10:23 am


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