PTC Suffers Software Theft

A Chinese software engineer is indicted by an American grand jury for allegedly stealing testing software from Parametric Technology. Leslie Suzukamo of Pioneer Press reports that Tim Hongguo Tian managed the testing of PTC's software after it was translated into other languages.

Last September 2005, he claimed to have a family emergency and received a leave of absenc to return to China. In reality, he joined Medtronic (in the USA), and used email to make PTC think he was in China. After he was gone for three months, PTC gave him until Dec 5 to return to work -- or be fired. Mr Suzukamo continues the story...

On Dec. 9, at about 11 p.m., Tian used his security badge to enter his office, where he logged onto the PTC computer network and downloaded the source code for quality-testing software. He e-mailed the code, worth about $200,000, to two personal e-mail accounts, the indictment said. Neither the U.S. Attorney's office nor PTC knows what happened to the software.

PTC admits they didn't disable his pass, thinking he was still in China. Mr Tian had worked for PTC in the USA for six years on a H-1B visa.