TRADE SECRETS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5149, 8 July 1927, Page 4

TRADE SECRETS.

TRICKS OF FIRM SPIES. SMALL FORTUNES MADE. Fierce competition for world markets and intense trade rivalry have brought into existence the trade spy, who makes it his business to steal and sell priceless secrets. Sometimes his reward is big money—sometimes death.

High ud in the service of the great steel firm of Krupps was a young German who had just been granted special leave, and when he boarded a southward-bound express, he carried a shabby portfolio and looked as innocent and harmless as any German “commercial.”

Suddenly two plain-clothes men tapped him on the shoulder and invited him to go with them to a private office at the railway police headqua.rters.

There he was invited to open his portfoio. But he was too q'uick for the police officers. With one swift movement he drew a six-chambered revolver and blew his brains out. What was the hidden meaning of. this tragedy ? The answer was known to the police before the contents of that portfolio lay upon the table. The man was a trade spy, and his in-nocent-looking portfolio contained plans, specifications, and technical data concerning a very valuable secret process known only to his employers, Krupps. He intended to take them to Paris. •

Had he got through undiscovered the gre : at Essen firm would now have found one of its French rivals manufacturing steel goods by their own secret processes.

What are such, trade secrets worth, and what are the spies paid for them ?

These thieves of trade secrets are employees seduced from their loyalties by big offers made by,the agents of rival firms. They are not spies and traitors at firstbut they speedily become so, especially in those countries where wages are low find the cost of living high, when tempted with big money prizes.

A trade secret may be worth millions to a rival concern. A bagatelle of £sooo' paid for stolen plans and technical information then is a mere nothing. But is much to the man seduced from his loyalty.

It is an open secret that all the great Continental firms are employing men as spies, and that counterespionage systems are being operated to circumvent their rivals. One of the queerest trade-spy stories concerns a big American firm. The vendor of trade gecrets brought to this £1,000,000 corporation whispered news of a machine which would convert flax into the finished material without the use of bleaching process. When the prospective buyers proved incredulous the wily swindler offered to show them the machine at work. Astonishing as it may sound, a complicated piece of machinery on very novel lines, into which flax went and from which linen emerged, convinced them and they paid up. The whole thing was, a swindle, for the finished fabric was in themacnine from first to last.

Just now the fashion trade is busy countering the spies who comei from New York to Parts to steal ideas for spring modes. Very often they are charming women whose bearing, disarms suspicion.

At a recent display in a famous Paris fashino house a woman who had seen all the latest creations, was followed. She was seen to turn into a big cafe, and the counter-spy took a seat near her.

He then saw her produce a small sketch book and start making sketches from memory of the models and colour schemes she had just been viewing as a potential customer.

Many vast fortunes have been made out of patent rights. It is therefore not surprising to find the same sort of traffic in patent plans. An apparently simple machine-patent may revolutionise the manufacture of. a certain article and place the firm possessing it far ahead of all rivals.

In one recent case in Germany, when the existence of tin immensely valuable new invention was known, the spy actually took employment in a draughtsman’s office and carried out his work in the ordinary way for some months before putting his plans into execution. He then 'started inserting highly-sensitised . carbons beneath the draughtsmen’s removing each section whenever a favourable moment occurred.

But one da.y he was caught in thS‘ act, and when search was made a, complete draughtsman’s outfit was, found in his lodgings, together with the half-finished, drawings of the secret patent.