Philips Lumileds Ex-Employee Sentenced for Stealing Trade Secrets

Robert Scott West was sentenced last week to 10 months home confinement, ordered to pay $100,000 in restitution to Philips Lumileds Lighting Company, and $5,000 in fines.

West, 21, of Morgan Hill, CA, pled guilty in federal court in San Jose on March 9^th to one count of Possession of Stolen Trade Secrets in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1832( a )( 3 ).

In February 2008, several months after resigning from his position as a senior product manager at Philips Lumileds to work for a competitor, West was found in possession of the architecture and product specifications for Philips Lumileds’ next generation of Luxeon Rebel surface mountable power LEDs.  According to the plea agreement, West had downloaded and copied the information before resigning from Philips. He intended to use the information to benefit himself and harm Philips.

Before pleading guilty, West met with representatives from Philips Lumileds and the government, and agreed to assist in accounting for all the copies of the confidential and proprietary information that he had made.

Philips Lumileds Lighting Company is a San Jose, CA company that designs and manufactures light emitting diodes, which may be used for computer displays, liquid crystal display televisions and general lighting. One of the company’s primary products was the Luxeon Rebel line of LED’s.

The maximum statutory penalty for each count of possession of stolen trade secrets in violation of U.S.C. § 1832( a )( 3 ) is 10 years imprisonment, 3 years of supervised release, and a fine of $250,000

Hanley Chew is the Assistant U.S. Attorney who prosecuted the case with the assistance of Lauri Gomez. The prosecution is the result of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigations. The investigation was overseen by the Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property Unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Philips Lumileds cooperated with the investigation.

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