The illicit acquisition of information about a company's activities. Such information may concern formulae, designs, personnel, or business plans. Methods include theft of documents, telephone tapping, and computer hacking, with or without collusion by corrupt employees.
Industrial espionage and corporate espionage are phrases used to describe espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of national security purposes.
At the most innocuous level, the term is applied to the legal and mundane methods of examining corporate publications, web sites, patent filings, and the like to determine the activities of a corporation (though this is normally referred to as business intelligence), through to illegal methods such as bribery, blackmail, technological surveillance and even occasional violence.
Information
Information can make the difference between success and failure;
Although a lot of information gathering is accomplished by combing through public records (public databases and patent filings), at times corporations feel the best way to get information is to take it. Corporate espionage is a threat to any business whose livelihood depends on information.
Other
In recent years, corporate espionage has taken on an expanded definition.
The government of France has conducted ongoing industrial espionage against American aerodynamics and satellite companies and vice versa.
The development of the Tupolev Tu-144 supersonic aircraft, with its rapid design and similarity to Concorde, was one of the most prominent examples of industrial espionage in the 20th century.
In popular culture
In the film Batman, Jack Napier is sent to destroy evidence prior to a police raid, being told it will look instead like corporate espionage.
The film Cypher, revolves around industrial espionage in a sci-fi setting, using an extreme form of deep-cover surveillance to question notions of the self.
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