For espionage of the cloak-and-dagger variety, it is hard to beat the pages of John le Carré or Ian Fleming. But the world of corporate spying has plenty of drama of its own. Take the alleged skulduggery in a recent court case involving two American software firms. In May a jury awarded Appian, whose headquarters are in McLean, Virginia, a whopping $2bn in damages after it had accused Massachusetts-based Pegasystems of illegally snooping on it to gain a competitive edge. The trial revealed that Pegasystems executives had referred to a contractor hired to obtain some of the ingredients of Appian’s secret sauce as “our spy”
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