NEW YORK: An Indian techie, indicted by a federal jury of theft of trade-secret data of Intel worth $1 billion and wire fraud, has pleaded not guilty.
Bishwamohan Pani, 33, was arraigned before a federal court in Boston Thursday afternoon. Pani pleaded "not guilty" on all five counts, a court clerk said on Friday.
The next hearing in has been scheduled for Jan 13, 2009.
On Nov 6, a federal grand jury had indicted Pani of stealing trade secret information from Intel, where he worked till June, before joining its rival AMD.
The indictment alleges that days before joining AMD, Pani remotely downloaded 13 "top-secret" Intel documents, along with other confidential information of the company.
These included a document which explained how encrypted documents could be reviewed when not connected to Intel's computer system. It also included information about Intel's processes for designing its newest generation of microprocessors.
Intel alleged the trade-secret information was worth $1 billion in research and development costs.
A copy of the indictment obtained by IANS says that Pani was assigned to design small subsections of Intel's next-generation Itanium microprocessor.
This line of microprocessors is designed for use in high-performance computer systems to ensure that data is not lost in mission-critical applications.
The indictment alleges Pani was on pay role of both Intel and AMD from June 8 to 11. During this period, he used his Intel-issued laptop computer to access Intel's computer network from outside the company and thereby downloaded 13 "top secret" documents of the company.
"Pani copied the downloaded file to an external hard drive, so he would have a copy after returning his Intel-issued laptop," it said.
Pani had no work-related reason to view or download these documents between June 8 and 11 as he had not been in the office for past several days and was no longer performing any Intel work, the company said.
