Editing Industrial espionage (section)

==Notable cases==

===British East India Company===
In 1848, the [[British East India Company]] broke [[Qing China]]'s global near-[[monopoly]] on tea production by smuggling Chinese tea out of the nation and copying Chinese tea-making processes.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/tea-time/535590/ |last1=Twilley |first1=Nicolla |last2=Graber |first2=Cynthia |title=Britain's Great Tea Heist |website=[[The Atlantic]] |date=2 August 2017 |access-date=September 30, 2022}}</ref> The [[British Empire]] had previously run a considerable trade deficit with China by importing the nation's [[tea]] and other goods. The British attempted to rectify the [[Deficit spending|deficit]] by trading [[opium]] to the Chinese, but encountered difficulties after the [[Daoguang Emperor]] banned the opium trade and the [[First Opium War]] broke out. To avoid further issues in trading tea with China, the East India Company hired [[Scottish people|Scottish]] [[Botany|botanist]] [[Robert Fortune]] to travel to China under the guise of a Chinese nobleman and obtain Chinese trade secrets and tea plants for replanting. Infiltrating Chinese tea-making facilities, Fortune recorded the Chinese process for creating tea and smuggled tea [[Leaf|leaves]] and [[seed]]s back to the East India Company.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-great-british-tea-heist-9866709/ |last=Rose |first=Sarah|title=The Great British Tea Heist |website=Smithsonian Magazine |access-date=September 30, 2022}}</ref> The East India Company later introduced these methods to [[Company rule in India|company-ruled India]], using India to compete and surpass China in tea production.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/10/392116370/tea-tuesdays-the-scottish-spy-who-stole-chinas-tea-empire |title=The Scottish Spy Who Stole China's Tea Empire |website=NPR |access-date=September 30, 2022}}</ref>

===France and the United States===
Between 1987 and 1989, [[IBM]] and [[Texas Instruments]] were thought to have been targeted by French [[DGSE]] with the intention of helping France's [[Groupe Bull]].{{sfn|''The New York Times''|1991}} In 1993, U.S. aerospace companies were also thought to have been targeted by French interests.{{sfn|Jehl|1993}} During the early 1990s, France was described as one of the most aggressive pursuers of espionage to garner foreign industrial and technological secrets.{{sfn|''The New York Times''|1991}} France accused the U.S. of attempting to sabotage its [[high tech]] industrial base.{{sfn|''The New York Times''|1991}} The government of France allegedly continues to conduct ongoing industrial espionage against American [[aerodynamics]] and [[satellite]] companies.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.hanford.gov/files.cfm/frenchesp.pdf |author=John A. Nolan |title=A Case Study in French Espionage: Renaissance Software |publisher=US Department of Energy: Hanford}}</ref>

===Volkswagen===
In 1993, car manufacturer [[Opel]], the German division of [[General Motors]], accused [[Volkswagen]] of industrial espionage after Opel's chief of production, [[José Ignacio López de Arriortúa|Jose Ignacio Lopez]], and seven other executives moved to Volkswagen.{{sfn|Reuters|1996}} Volkswagen subsequently threatened to sue for defamation, resulting in a four-year legal battle.{{sfn|Reuters|1996}} The case, which was finally settled in 1997, resulted in one of the largest settlements in the history of industrial espionage, with Volkswagen agreeing to pay General Motors $100 million and to buy at least $1 billion of car parts from the company over 7 years, although it did not explicitly apologize for Lopez's behavior.{{sfn|Meredith|1997}}

===Hilton and Starwood===
In April 2009, [[Starwood Hotels and Resorts|Starwood]] accused its rival [[Hilton Worldwide]] of a "massive" case of industrial espionage. After being acquired by [[The Blackstone Group]], Hilton employed 10 managers and executives from Starwood. Starwood accused Hilton of stealing corporate information relating to its luxury brand concepts, used in setting up its Denizen hotels. Specifically, former head of its [[luxury brands]] group, Ron Klein, was accused of downloading "truckloads of documents" from a laptop to his personal email account.{{sfn|Clark|2009}}

===Google and Operation Aurora===
On 13 January 2010, [[Google]] announced that operators, from within China, had hacked into their Google China operation, stealing intellectual property and, in particular, accessing the email accounts of human rights activists.{{sfn|Harvey|2010}}{{sfn|Branigan|2010}} The attack was thought to have been part of a more widespread cyber attack on companies within China which has become known as [[Operation Aurora]].{{sfn|Branigan|2010}} Intruders were thought to have launched a [[zero-day attack]], exploiting a weakness in the [[Microsoft]] [[Internet Explorer]] browser, the malware used being a modification of the [[trojan horse (computing)|trojan]] "[[Hydraq]]".{{sfn|Lohr|2010}} Concerned about the possibility of hackers taking advantage of this previously unknown [[Vulnerability (computer security)|weakness]] in Internet Explorer, the governments of Germany and, subsequently France, issued warnings not to use the [[Web browser|browser]].{{sfn|Ahmed|2010}}

There was speculation that "insiders" had been involved in the attack, with some [[Google China]] employees being denied access to the company's internal networks after the company's announcement.{{sfn|Beaumont|2010}}{{sfn|Reuters|2010}} In February 2010, computer experts from the U.S. [[National Security Agency]] claimed that the attacks on Google probably originated from two Chinese universities associated with expertise in [[computer science]], [[Shanghai Jiao Tong University]] and the [[Shandong Lanxiang Vocational School]], the latter having close links to the [[People's Liberation Army|Chinese military]].{{sfn|Markoff|Barboza|2010}}

Google claimed at least 20 other companies had also been targeted in the cyber attack, said by the ''London [[The Times|Times]]'', to have been part of an "ambitious and sophisticated attempt to steal secrets from unwitting corporate victims" including "defence contractors, finance and technology companies".{{sfn|Branigan|2010}}{{sfn|Harvey|2010}}{{sfn|Ahmed|2010}} Rather than being the work of individuals or organised criminals, the level of sophistication of the attack was thought to have been "more typical of a [[nation state]]".{{sfn|Harvey|2010}} Some commentators speculated as to whether the attack was part of what is thought to be a concerted Chinese industrial espionage operation aimed at getting "high-tech information to jump-start [[Economy of China|China's economy]]".{{sfn|Lawson|2010}} Critics pointed to what was alleged to be a lax attitude to the intellectual property of foreign businesses in China, letting them operate but then seeking to copy or [[Reverse engineering|reverse engineer]] their technology for the benefit of Chinese "national champions".{{sfn|Rogin|2010}} In Google's case, they may have (also) been concerned about the possible misappropriation of source code or other technology for the benefit of Chinese rival [[Baidu]]. In March 2010 Google subsequently decided to cease offering [[Censorship in China|censored results in China]], leading to the closing of its Chinese operation.

===''USA v. Lan Lee, et al.''===
The United States charged two former [[NetLogic]] Inc. engineers, [[Lan Lee]] and [[Yuefei Ge]], of committing economic espionage against TSMC and NetLogic, Inc. A jury acquitted the defendants of the charges with regard to TSMC and deadlocked on the charges with regard to NetLogic. In May 2010, a federal judge dismissed all the espionage charges against the two [[defendant]]s. The judge ruled that the U.S. government presented no evidence of espionage.{{sfn|Levine|2010}}

===Dongxiao Yue and Chordiant Software, Inc.===
In May 2010, the federal jury convicted [[Chordiant]] Software, Inc., a U.S. corporation, of stealing [[Dongxiao Yue|Dongxiao Yue's]] JRPC technologies and used them in a product called Chordiant Marketing Director. Yue previously filed lawsuits against [[Symantec Corporation]] for a similar theft.{{sfn|Dongxiau Yue, et al., v. Chordiant Software, Inc.|2010}}