A fast-response digital investigation to find evidence of intent
Our legal client requested our assistance in a case involving suspected IP theft. Their client, a software development company, had suspicions that a recently departed employee was using their proprietary code in developing a product for their new employer, despite being bound by strict non-disclosure agreements.
Having organised an Anton Piller order, the individual’s hard drive had been seized and a restricted dataset collected (in line with the keywords stipulated in the Anton Piller order). Our team was required to respond quickly to attend the sheriff’s office in Cape Town where the data was available to review. We carried out a review on-site, as required by the law enforcement agency, gathered our analysis and produced a written report of our digital investigation for our legal client to meet the court’s tight timescales.
Access to the code that the individual had been working on for his new employer was requested, however five months elapsed since the potential breach had been discovered and there had been ample time to clean up the code to remove traces of plagiarism. A review of the code by an expert developer, examining the individual’s code submissions, did not identify evidence of proprietary source code in the new company’s software development. However, evidence from our digital forensic investigation triangulated and cross referenced the individual’s browsing history, access to the client company’s code development platform and design files, with time stamped code submissions. Our expertise in analysing digital artefacts and meta data was crucial to support the investigation to provide evidence of intent.
Based on our investigative experience, we were able to establish:
- The individual had set up his personal email account with access to the company’s central online platform used to manage code development, and had accessed the source code four months after his departure date.
- A timeline to prove that the individual had not only opened source code files, he had also accessed design and architectural documents at the same time, on numerous occasions.
- Simultaneously, the individual was posting and submitting code for his new employer, whilst reviewing source code on our client’s platform, potentially demonstrating intent to plagiarise IP.
The outcome of our digital investigation?
Our legal client was able to use the information submitted in our written report to inform further investigation and support their case. All information was collected defensibly and rigorously investigated, so our client could have confidence in the evidence should it be required by the court.
Get in touch if you would like to find out more about our digital forensics services.