"Ex-Seagate employee claims the company stole MIT research, tried to cover up its tracks" - www.engadget.com http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/29/ex-seagate-employee-claims-the-company-stole-mit-research-tried/?icid=engadget-iphone-url 
Sure, this ain't the first time that Seagate's allegedly run afoul of the law, but this tale will definitely have you breathlessly demanding more (you know, if patent infringement is exciting to you -- which would actually be pretty weird). Way back in July 2000, Convolve (an M.I.T. spin-off formed to market the school's hard drive noise reduction research) sued Seagate for using patented tech in its Sound Barrier Technology -- with the end result being that Seagate drives no longer support automatic acoustic management. But that isn't the exciting part. In a dramatic turn reported by The New York Times, a former Seagate employee named Paul A. Galloway has apparently provided "an eyewitness account" of what went down, including the theft of info obtained in a meeting between the two companies held in 1998 and 1999 and the destruction of blueprints relating to Convolve's technology. As for the whistleblower, he claims that he was kept in the dark about the nature of the research he was working on, with Seagate even going so far as to take his computer with notes pertinent to the trial. All of this (and more) are detailed in an affidavit that is available (in PDF form) by hitting that source link -- and, man, is it a page-turner!
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