Indian charged with stealing Intel’s trade secrets...

An Indian software engineer has been accused of stealing trade secrets of his former employer Intel after taking a new job at rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD).

Biswamohan Pani, who worked as a designer with chipmaker Intel at the company's plant in Boston, was accused of copying a lot of classified Intel design documents.

Pani, a native of Orissa, has been charged by the FBI in a US district court in Boston in late August.

According to an affidavit filed in the courts, Pani began working at the Hudson facility in 2003 and one of the projects he was working on was the design of the Itanium Processor, PC World Magazine reported.

Investigators have said that there is no reason to believe that AMD was involved in the alleged theft of trade secrets.

"At this point, there has been no evidence that AMD knew that Pani had downloaded Intel's files, had encouraged Pani to do so or that it received those files at all," FBI special agent Timothy Russell said in the affidavit.

"It appears at this point that Pani obtained Intel's trade secrets to benefit himself in his work at AMD without AMD's knowledge," it said.

Pani (33) joined AMD this June. A spokesman for AMD has said that the company was cooperating fully in the investigation. AMD no longer employs Pani.

The FBI had allegedly found eight Intel documents totalling more than 100 pages, and 19 computer-aided design drawings - all classified as confidential, secret or top secret -- during a search of his house on July 1, according to the affidavit cited in the media report.