Engineering Ethics—Case Studies in Stealing Trade Secrets

The United States Patent and Trademark Office defines a trade secret as information that has three characteristics:

• Has either actual or potential independent economic value by virtue of not being generally known
• Has value to others who cannot legitimately obtain the information
• Is subject to reasonable efforts to maintain its secrecy

The purpose of this course is to broaden the professional engineer’s understanding of engineering ethics through consideration of seven case studies of the theft of trade secrets by engineers. The studies describe actual cases that have been successfully prosecuted by agencies of the U.S. federal government.

The ethical—rather than legal—aspects of the cases are developed by identifying specific passages in published Standards of Conduct for professional engineers that were violated by the engineers who were found guilty of theft.