Mr. Atul Malhotra seemed to have gotten into troubled since the very beginning of his job as vice president at the HP printer division. He managed to keep his position for only about four months before being fired because of an e-mail he sent to two of his superiors.

The former HP vice president had previously worked as sales director for IBM’s printer division, where he began his activity as early as 1977. In the last two months of his employment at the company, he requested an IBM document that contained confidential information about the company’s pricing policy.

Soon after being employed by HP as vice president, he allegedly sent an e-mail that had the IBM document attached to it with the subject line “for your eyes only” to one of his superiors, a senior HP vice president whose name hasn’t been made public. Mr. Atul Malhotra then sent the same e-mail to yet another senior vice president.

These all resulted in HP starting an internal investigation, which eventually led to the company deciding to fire its new vice president, and reporting the incident in which he was implied to law enforcement. According to the Wired News, Emma McCulloch, a spokesperson for Hewlett-Packard, explained the company’s decision by saying that "the activity with which Malhotra is charged was in direct violation of clear HP policies, including HP’s standards of business conduct."

The indictment of trade-secret theft was filed on June 27, 2008. According to Hewlett-Packard officials, the company has given full support to government investigations.