An ex-Corning Inc. employee was sentenced to four years in federal prison for stealing company trade secrets and selling them to a Taiwanese competitor.
Jonathan Sanders was also fined USD 20,000 dur…
An ex-Corning Inc. employee was sentenced to four years in federal prison for stealing company trade secrets and selling them to a Taiwanese competitor. Jonathan Sanders was also fined USD 20,000 during his sentencing on 18 April 2006 in US District Court. Mr. Sanders faced up to nine years in prison. He pleaded guilty in January 2006 to a felony charge of conspiring to commit trade secret theft. Mr. Sanders, 37, of Salvisa, Kentucky, worked at a Corning glassmaking plant in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. He admitted selling stolen blueprints about Corning“s LCD substrate making process to PicVue Electronics Ltd. for USD 34,000 in 2000, according to federal prosecutors. The materials were returned to Corning after it took PicVue to court. The stolen technology was worth more than USD 100 million, prosecutors said. Mr. Sanders told investigators he found the documents at the Harrodsburg plant in 1999 in a hopper containing confidential material to be destroyed. He took the documents to a job interview with PicVue officials, thinking it might help him get hired. Mr. Sanders said he did not initially intend to sell the blueprints but changed his mind, a move he described as “a serious lapse of judgment”.