Errata :
The original text of this article erroneously mentioned RBC Bearings.
The company is not involved in any way.

The Supreme Court of New Hampshire has refused to overturn lower court rulings in the case of New Hampshire Ball Bearings (a division of Minebea, Japan) against W. Scott Jackson, a former employee accused of trade secret misappropriation and of violating his NHBB nondisclosure agreement; and Sargent Controls and Aerospace (a division of Dover Diversified).

Mr. Jackson had worked in engineering at New Hampshire Ball Bearing for more than 20 years when a former NHBB employee recruited him to join Sargent Controls and Aerospace. He joined Sargent in February 2006 as a sales manager.

A few months later, NHBB sued Mr. Jackson and Sargent Controls, including its Kahr Bearing division. NHBB alleged that just before Mr. Jackson left for Sargent Controls, he accessed and allegedly copied dozens of files from his laptop computer to USB flash drives. While many of the files had only personal content, NHBB alleged many other files contained proprietary engineering data, trade secrets and other competitively sensitive information. Mr. Jackson claimed they were personal data and publicly available bearing industry information such as part numbers, dimensions, etc.

A perusal of the court documents shows just how extensive and in-depth today's computer system forensic research has become. The courts allowed extensive forensic examination of family computers, flash drives, and many (but not all) Sargent Controls computers. A few suspect files turned up, along with what was characterized as suspiciously timely file-wiping and reformatting activity.

After a month-long trial, the jury rejected NHBB's claims of trade secret disclosure, since much of the suspicious information apparently transferred was indeed standard bearing industry specifications, part numbers, and other publicly-available nonsensitive data. No NHBB data was found on Sargent computers or on those of its Kahr Bearing division. However, in rejecting NHBB's claims for misappropriation of trade secrets, it did find Mr. Jackson had violated his nondisclosure agreement NHBB.

NHBB appealed to the NH Superior court and then to the Supreme court, citing various points of evidence gathering and availability, jury instructions and access to information, but the appeals were rejected.

The Superior Court did refer NHBB's charges that Sargent Controls intentionally deleted data files from its computers ("evidence spoilage") to the Attorney General of New Hampshire, the AG's office declined to pursue the matter.

NHBB appealed to the Supreme Court of New Hampshire, based on the trial court's limited evidence discovery allowances, jury instructions, request for sanctions against Sargent Controls, procedural decisions, and denial of post-trial motions.

The NH Supreme Court has now rejected all of NHBB's points of appeal and affirmed the lower court's decision.

NH Supreme Court decision in 2008-073
Archived webcast of the NH Supreme Court hearing from January 9, 2009