The Federal Court has awarded $50,000 in damages to a mining company after a former employee was found to have breached his employment contract as well as copyright legislation for downloading thousands of computer files as a “trophy” for his time at the company.
Andrew Koudstaal, a former software engineer with Leica Geosystems, downloaded and copied approximately 190,000 files – or more than 60 gigabytes of data – onto his hard drive shortly before resigning in November 2011.
The employer discovered Koudstaal had taken the files when a marketing executive for the Leica Geosystems and friend of the former employee saw a folder named “Leica” on a television screen that was linked to his hard drive in January 2012.
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Broede Carmody is a former senior SmartCompany reporter. Before this, he was a co-editor of RMIT University’s student magazine Catalyst.
