Guidance Software Professional Services was hired by a product manufacturer to investigate the theft of trade secrets. The company alleged that a former employee removed files containing corporate secrets from their computer systems and then used these secrets to establish a new company, creating a competitive product line and marketing to same customer base. Litigation had been ongoing for two years, which allowed the opposition to continue their business operations and target the suppliers and vendors of our client, resulting in significant lost revenue.

The goal of this investigation was to prove that the files the opposition was using as the basis for their product line were derived from our client’s files. Using EnCase Enterprise as the only tool, in just six hours our consultants identified information necessary to support the client’s claims. It showed that the files used by the opposition in their manufacturing process had the identical metadata of the files originally created by our client, and that they had been modified to suit the opposition’s plans. The similarities in document format, font selection, file creation dates and document metadata proved to be the compelling evidence our client needed to present their case.