People v. Pribich

In People v. Pribich (1994) 21 Cal. App. 4th 1844, the defendant was convicted of trade secret theft for possessing a work schedule belonging to his former employer, Aquatec. At trial, a prosecution witness testified that the company would not want the schedule divulged "because it would have revealed where Aquatec was at any point in time regarding its product development." ( Id. at p. 1850.) As the court of appeal noted, however, the witness "did not specifically allege any advantage a competitor could obtain by theoretical access to such information. For example, there was no indication that any unspecified company could or would have worked any faster or differently if it had access to appellant's work schedule." (Ibid.) Testimony that the information "would be of 'great interest' to a competitor," and evidence of the company's "desire not to have any competitors know appellant's work schedule, . . . do not reveal, except by an insufficient and generalized assumption, that any competitive advantage would specifically flow from the revelation of the information." ( Id. at p. 1851.)