Maureen O'Gara

AMD Monday charged four former managers from its Boxborough, Massachusetts facility including its erstwhile VP of strategic development Robert Feldstein with looting its files and taking more than 100,000 confidential documents with them to new jobs at graphics rival Nvidia last year.

The suit, which does not name Nvidia, was filed in district court in Boston.

AMD said the contraband includes licenses with two enterprise customers, a document outlining proposed licensing strategies and plans for new technologies.

It complained that if either of the first two fell into Nvidia's hands Nvidia would have an "unfair advantage."

Those charged with misappropriating trade secrets, breach of contract, unfair competition and violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act include Manoo Desai, Richard Hagen and Nicolas Kociuk. They were also charged with violating an undertaking not to solicit strategic AMD employees while at Nvidia.

Feldstein was responsible for getting AMD chips into gaming consoles such as Microsoft's Xbox 360, Nintendo's Wii U and Sony's PlayStation 3.

AMD said it had forensic evidence derived from their computers that the four had "transferred to external storage devices trade secret files and information in the days prior to their leaving AMD to work for Nvidia." The plunder was all clearly marked confidential.

It got a temporary restraining order mandating that Feldstein, Desai and Kociuk preserve the allegedly pilfered documents and not make use of them. Naturally it wants the files back and asked the court for an injunction.

AMD is still trying to figure out if others were involved.