HP on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Adrian Jones, the company’s former head of enterprise sales for the Asia region, to stop him from sharing hundreds of documents he allegedly stole before leaving the company and joining his current employer, Oracle. HP said it had planned to fire Jones earlier this year after having launched an investigation into his expense reports and his alleged relationship with another HP employee who worked beneath him. Jones left the company, however, and HP alleges that he took hundreds of confidential documents, emails and various customer records with him on a USB drive. In the lawsuit, HP calls for the return of all data and seeks damages resulting from the theft of trade secrets. The allegations of fraudulent expenses and inappropriate behavior with a subordinate are strikingly similar to those made against against former CEO Mark Hurd before he was forced to resign last year. Like Jones, Hurd now holds an executive role at Oracle.
