Misappropriation or Theft of Information

The protection of economically valuable data or information, whether proprietary or not, from competitors or potential misuse is an important aspect of the growth and market power of modern companies.

A range of civil an criminal law remedies are available in national legislation to safeguard such information.

The more well known type of loss of information is through plain theft by an insider or a hacker. In the context of internet, there are programs that are capable of retrieving information from a computer, without the user’s knowledge ands ending it to a hacker’s own site.

Any encrypted protective device will be broken by the hacker first before files are stolen. Such programs obviously pose a serious risk of loss of valuable data or information.

Other forms of loss of information are disclosure, whether deliberately or not, by employees or contractual parties or through lapse or oversight of the company.

The disgruntled employee or ne who is offered bribes for passing on secrets is very much the typical miscreant.

Not unexpectedly, although any information of a confidential nature is protected from theft or unauthorized disclosure under laws of one kind of another, the specific laws in each nation differ widely.

Besides the legal redress available under trade secret law, law of confidentiality or other IP laws that pertain to propriety information, there are a range of other laws.

The main legal instrument increasingly being adopted by nations is computer misuse or crime law.
Misappropriation or Theft of Information