Tyler, Texas – Hewlett-Packard Co. paid to obtain information from a former head of a Dell Inc. unit about Dell’s plans to enter the printer market, a former HP executive said in court papers.
Karl Kamb, former HP vice president of business development and strategy, said in papers filed Friday in federal court that the arrangement was so secret, his firm accused him of stealing money he paid.
The former Dell employee “obtained information regarding Dell’s anticipated launch of its printer business, including detailed product configurations and specifications, target costs and pricing estimates, and proposed manufacturers and suppliers,” Kamb stated. “In an effort to conceal HP’s clandestine activities, code names were assigned to the Dell data collection project.”
Kamb’s statements were part of a countersuit against Hewlett-Packard. The company sued Kamb and other former employees in 2005, accusing them of stealing trade secrets about flat-panel monitors to start a new company.
Hewlett-Packard said in court papers it hired the former Dell executive as a consultant. The company, the world’s biggest maker of personal computers and printers, is seeking more than $100 million in damages in the original suit.
Kamb said Hewlett-Packard, suspecting theft, conducted an investigation that included trying to access his cellphone records using a practice known as pretexting.
The claim that pretexting was involved in Hewlett-Packard’s investigation is “to the best of our knowledge, patently untrue,” said spokesman Ryan Donovan. Hewlett-Packard said last year that investigators, in a separate probe into boardroom leaks, had used pretexting to obtain private phone records.
Hewlett-Packard sought the records thinking “that Kamb had profited and was diverting funds from monies that HP had in fact paid to an entity in exchange for confidential information about a major competitor,” Kamb said.
