Monday, March 05, 2007, 3/05/2007 07:46:00 AM

Texas Trade Secrets Crime? Prepare to do the Time.

From the Lufkin (TX) Daily News, a story concerning a Texas man sentenced to seven years in prison for stealing trade secrets from a company at which he worked.

Last October, a state court jury found Frank McClain, Jr. guilty of stealing $1.4 in cards and back sheet notes when he quit his job as a technician in 2001 with Didrikson and Associates, a pipeline services company.

According to the article, cards are flat, circuit chip boards used in control panels to operate gas and steam turbine generators at power plants and back sheets are the guides technicians use to repair cards.

A jury found that the notes written on the back sheets by technicians at the company, known as shortcuts to speeding up the repair process, were trade secrets.

The seven-year sentence is much longer than federal defendants typically receive in cases concerning theft of trade secrets.
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