Industrial espionage takes two main forms: acquiring intellectual property like manufacturing processes and recipes, or sequestering proprietary operational information like customer data, pricing, and research. It involves activities like theft of trade secrets, bribery, and technological surveillance to gain commercial advantages. For example, in 1993 Volkswagen was accused of and later settled industrial espionage allegations after executives from GM's Opel division defected to Volkswagen, resulting in a $100 million settlement and agreement to purchase $1 billion in parts from GM over 7 years.

1. Industrial espionage
By:-Laxman Bhadane.
IMR College ,Jalgaon

2.  Introduction:-
 Industrial espionage is a form of espionage
conducted for commercial purposes instead of
purely national security. Economic espionage is
conducted or orchestrated by governments and is
international in scope, while industrial or
corporate espionage is more often national and
occurs between companies or corporations.[2]

3.  Forms of industrial espionage:-
 Takes place in two main forms.
 1) It may include the acquisition of intellectual property,
such as information on industrial manufacture, ideas,
techniques and processes, recipes and formulas.
 2) it could include sequestration of proprietary or
operational information, such as that on customer
datasets, pricing, sales, marketing, research and
development, policies, prospective bids, planning or
marketing strategies or the changing compositions and
locations of production.
 It may describe activities such as theft of trade secrets,
bribery, blackmail and technological surveillance

4.  For Example:-
 Volkswagen:-
 In 1993, car manufacturer Opel, the German division of
General Motors, accused Volkswagen of industrial
espionage after Opel's chief of production, Jose Ignacio
Lopez, and seven other executives moved to
Volkswagen.[15] Volkswagen subsequently threatened to
sue for defamation, resulting in a four-year legal battle.[15]
The case, which was finally settled in 1997, resulted in one
of the largest settlements in the history of industrial
espionage, with Volkswagen agreeing to pay General
Motors $100 million and to buy at least $1 billion of car
parts from the company over 7 years, although it did not
explicitly apologize for Lopez's behavior.[44]

5. Thank you