Boeing acknowledges stolen documents.

• Author: Swartz, Nikki
• Position: Up front: news, trends and analysis

Boeing Co. recently acknowledged that two of its employees possessed competitor Lockheed Martin Corp.'s propietary documents during a $2 billion rocket-launcher contract competition in 1998.

Boeing fired them, suspended a third employee, and said the incident was isolated. But subsequent events revealed more than just one instance of Boeing employees possessing stolen Lockheed documents. As reported by the Washington Post, court filings submitted by Boeing in a separate lawsuit revealed that the company fired an employee in 2001 who admitted to having "tons" of proprietary Lockheed documents, including secret pricing data. The filings were prepared as part of Boeing's defense in a lawsuit brought by a former employee, Krishnan Raghavan, who alleged he was wrongfully fired after he told Boeing managers that a colleague--Dean Farmer, a former Lockheed engineer--had the proprietary documents. Farmer reportedly brought the documents--8,800 pages--with him to Boeing from Lockheed.

Farmer's attorney said Farmer wanted to use the computer files as templates and never intended to use them for competitive purposes. He also said none of the documents were used to help Boeing win the $2 billion...