Toyota Engineer arrested for industrial espionage!

[mjstallard]

http://f1.racing-live.com/en/headlin...01180929.shtml

To summarise...
A former Ferrari employee now working for Toyota has been arrested after a request made by an Italian prosecuter in Modena, lodged a complaint with a German court for Industrial espionage.

Blimey!!!

[Knowlesy]

I had a feeeling this might happen you know!!!!

Bloody hell!

[Inigo Montoya]

Just was running over here to post about this. I just read it on Gazzetta. Maybe Neil was right about Toyota being ruthless in their pursuit of world domination!

[MrBluesman1]

can't say I am shocked really

[avsfan733]

neither am I Blues! I am surprised we don't get more of this. Could have some serious ramifications if this gets serious and become a precedent

[ASCII Man]

My god, don't you people see?!
The end of the world is near!
The balance of evil powers has shifted from Italy to Japan!
We must put a stop to this or the whole world will be lost forever!

Or i could just stop drinking for now...

[MrBluesman1]

unless he had info on next years Ferrari I don't think Ferrari are going to be too worried about it. I'm not saying it should be condoned but the data he would have would not really help Toyota as much as having Mike Gascoyne there would help them now

[Sodemo]

So what if Toyota got info from Ferrari? Has it helped them? No, they are still trawling around at the back of the grid for the majority of GPs.

Whatever "info" they were given, it didn't work.

[ASCII Man]

Ooh, too bad..
I already packed up for going to japan with a sniper rifle and some nukes...

Guess it'll have to wait a few days now...

[Edmonton]

Not surprised Toyota would do something like this.

[Knowlesy]

They'll be fitting illegal turbos to their cars next.

Err, hang on.......

[Dutch chap]

Well, Toyota is known to do it good, or don´t do it at all. They´ve been buying their employees out of running contracts, and caused some disturbance in the F1 community from that. Would they really go this far? Anyone around whou wants to start a poll over this?

[corkholio]

I bet it's going to be tough for them to find visual evidence.

[DNQ]

heh.

I wonder if Toyota will build a 'car' next year, rather than just a 'clone'.......

[gttouring]

Is it really a surprise? Toyota has been pilfering talent from all over, but I understand espionage to be a guy working for toyota who works at ferarri delivering secrets at night to the Japanese team, is this what happened before he went over to the other red team? (red/white)

[neilap]

Originally posted by Inigo Montoya
Just was running over here to post about this. I just read it on Gazzetta. Maybe Neil was right about Toyota being ruthless in their pursuit of world domination!

Well we don't know the outcome yet but since there was an arrest there must be some evidence. Its nothing new to me though, I am just surprised they got caught so easily. What will more than likely happen is, all the blame will be put on an individual or a few individuals so the Toyota name can stay free of blame. The same thing happened in the WRC.

[Gt_R]

Everyone who had eyes could see how obviously the Toyota this year resembled the F2002 and subsequently copied the sidepod of the F2003 for the 2nd half of the season. In fact, Ferrari (in a interview with Brawn)had hinted of espoinage and that they suspect that some of their information were stolen by departing staff.

I can't say i'm too surprised. I expect "flow of information" to occur when personnels move from one team to the other, and Ferrari had lost quite a few good guys recently. But obviously, this had gone more serious that i expected with stolen data brought over to a rival team.

Obviously, he is offered a huge reward to do such betrayals. And Toyota did cheat in Rally. Though we can't conclude Toyota's involved for now, they definetly did benefit with so many key personnels from other teams. To those who think that it's not serious, just look at how well Toyota performed since mid season? Leading races, being on the front of qualifyings, etc...

If so, Toyota and that offending piece of **** ought to be heavily punished to set a precedent.

[ralf fan]

Well TOYO have been splahing so much money to get the best that it really is not a surprise!

[neilap]

Here is a quote from ITV...

A Toyota spokesman said: "Our only relation to it is that this man now works for us. We have done nothing wrong."

In other worlds, "It wasn't me"

[BootsOntheSide]

A very covnenient way of passing the buck. The car clearly resembled last year's Ferrari, only it cost 3 times as much and was much slower, and much less reliable.

Toyota only finished 8th, despite the coincidental ITV hype about how much they'd improved (the sponsorship was a wise PR investment on that level alone), and they were last of the Michelin teams, even with massive investment. Not impressive.

Toyota are willing to endorse (or, probably, instigate) this shameless behaviour, yet other teams sack drivers for indescretions which are nothing to do with racing (Thomas Scheckter at Jaguar)

Formula 1 was cursed the day Toyota entered. CART and Rallying have suffered from them, and IRL and NASCAR may be next.

[gttouring]

interesting view-Boots.
Toyota brings more Woe than Show to good sports. Will they sound a death knell to NASCAR? and IRL- I think the tighter controlled NASCAR might not let it happen- even if Fuel injection is rumored to start in a few years, The IRL went the 2 injector per cylinder route at behest of Toyota so it wouldn't surprise me if something is ugly over there.
But perhaps Toyota's F1 efforts will just go blah when they can not unseat the present Kings, Ferrari,Williams, Mercedes, adn the new prince Renault- Toyota has more work cut out for them then imaginable

[John Abrahamsen]

Guys, you mix the two expressions: cheating and espionage. This leads to mixing what happend in WRC with what you think have happend in F1. For those saying Toyota cheating and ripping up the WRC history: What exact rules have Toyota broken in Formula 1? There are no paragraph for espionage in F1. Fully legal. Don`t mix this with cheating in the sport! This is a private case . Really nothing to do with NASCAR either.

Personally I think that someone in Ferrari have gotten this great idea as a result of the budget cut they are facing next year. Wouldn`t it be great if Ferrari sues Toyota and get some millions in compensation? I also think that the people who have lodged theses accusations against the TF103, are the same kind of people who writes: "TF103 = F2002 just repainted" on this forum. I would also like to say that the accusations have not been made against Toyota, but the person who worked for Ferrari. The mixing of Toyota with this person have been made by the press. Gazetto told us that the entire building have been searched and "evidence" have been taken. Also the man were placed under custidy according to them. In a offical Toyota statement they say that the police came visit them on Thursday to search this persons workspace and computer, and he were brought to the station to answer some questions. They stated the man were on duty again on Friday morning. Very small custidy I must say. And they did not find anything they could use as evidence. They took his away PC for investigation, but specialist did not, repeat NOT find anything.

Ferrari must have some great security worked out. If an employee can burn files to a CD and walk right out of the HQ with it, I would be suprised.

Just a storm in a tea cup imo.

"He was briefly questioned and they looked at his computer. He resumed his work normally the next day," Toyota spokesman Andrea Ficarelli told Reuters. "This has nothing to do with Toyota and for that reason we will not make any further statement." "The company is not subject to any investigation. Investigators simply wanted to talk to this man, who happens to work for us. There will not be any sanctions from Toyota against the man because from our side his behaviour is absolutely correct."

Sorry, I just hate reading **** about Toyota, which they have not deserved.

[maxell]

John,

Where have you read that they didn't find anything? Such investigations should take many days or even weeks!

[John Abrahamsen]

Well, that is what I have read in the numerous articles around the web where Toyotas press release have been used. And not Gazettos version.

[GTRMagic]

There was a local Intellectual Property case here in Australia some years ago, an aggrieved team owner took a number of former staff, and their new employer with claims that they took knowledge with them to the new employer that the former team owner had paid to develop.

It is a very fine line when it comes to IP, whether the person from Ferrari knowingly acquired drawings that were the property of that organisation, with the express intent of supplying them elsewhere, or more that they were a keepsake from times past... without particular relevance to current practices.

The thing I dont get is how he got caught.... if I had a Ferrari design on my laptop, and I intended making money from it in the future, there would be very few people I would be telling!