Location: Clerkenwell, London
Sector: Engineering and Product Design
Reason for Surveillance: Intellectual Property and Trade Secret Protection
Background
A boutique engineering and industrial design studio based in Clerkenwell approached Bond Rees corporate investigators after growing concerned that a competitor had launched a product with design features strikingly similar to an unreleased concept the studio had been developing for a major client under a strict non-disclosure agreement. The studio’s leadership were understandably alarmed — not only was their own commercial relationship with the client at risk, but a leak of this kind could expose them to a breach of contract claim running into six figures.
The design in question had only been accessible to a small internal team of eight people, plus two contractors who had been engaged for CAD modelling work in the final weeks of the project. There was no obvious external breach — no evidence of a hacked email account or a compromised server — which pointed toward either a deliberate internal leak or, less maliciously, careless handling of sensitive files outside the office.
The Brief
The studio needed us to establish, discreetly and without disrupting an active client relationship, whether the leak had originated internally, and if so, through which individual or channel. Given the small pool of suspects, this required a careful, low-footprint approach — anything too visible risked tipping off the individual responsible and destroying evidence, or alternatively creating a toxic atmosphere among an otherwise loyal and long-standing team.
The Investigation
We began with a digital forensics review, conducted in partnership with the client’s outsourced IT provider, examining file access logs, USB device connection history, and cloud storage activity for the relevant project folders. This is often where these cases are actually solved — not through a camera in a ceiling tile, but through a careful reconstruction of who touched what file, and when.
The logs showed nothing unusual for the eight core staff, but flagged an anomaly: one of the two contractors had accessed the full project folder — including files well outside the scope of his CAD modelling brief — on several occasions in the final two weeks of the contract, and had connected a personal USB storage device to his work laptop on two of those occasions.
To corroborate this digital trail before raising it with the client’s management, we conducted a period of open-source and physical due diligence on the contractor, reviewing his professional networking activity and confirming — through publicly available company filings — an undisclosed prior consultancy relationship with the competitor firm that had released the similar product. We also conducted limited, proportionate physical observation of the contractor’s movements around the time he left the studio’s employment, which confirmed a meeting with a known representative of the competitor business at a café near the competitor’s offices.
Throughout this process, we were conscious of the need to keep the studio’s small team functioning normally. Only the managing director and one trusted senior partner were aware an investigation was underway; the remaining seven core staff continued working on the live client project without any change to their routine, which mattered both for confidentiality and for maintaining the client relationship that had prompted the concern in the first place. We provided the managing director with a short written update at the end of each investigative phase, deliberately framed around what had and had not been established, rather than premature conclusions, so that no decisions were taken before the evidential picture was complete.
We also examined whether the studio’s own file-sharing platform retained version history for the disputed design files, which allowed us to establish precisely which files had been accessed and at what stage of development, ruling out the possibility that the similarity had arisen from an earlier, less distinctive version of the concept that might have been more innocently shared or discussed at an industry event.
Findings
The combination of digital forensic evidence and physical corroboration built a clear picture: the contractor had accessed and copied design files outside his authorised scope, had an undisclosed commercial relationship with a competitor, and had met with that competitor’s representative shortly after the similar product first appeared in trade press. While we could not access the contents of the USB device directly — that step would have required either the contractor’s cooperation or a court order — the pattern of access, relationship, and timing was compelling.
Outcome
The studio’s solicitors used our evidence report as the foundation for a formal letter before action against both the former contractor and the competitor firm. The matter was resolved through a confidential settlement before proceedings were issued, which included a commitment from the competitor to withdraw the disputed product features. Separately, the studio tightened its contractor onboarding process, introducing project-specific access permissions and a standard NDA clause explicitly covering post-engagement obligations.
Lessons for Other Businesses
Trade secret leaks are rarely as cinematic as they sound. In our experience they are usually the product of ordinary access controls being too loose for a short period, combined with an individual willing to exploit that gap. The most effective response combines digital forensics with old-fashioned, proportionate physical investigation — the paper trail tells you what happened, the observation tells you why. Businesses working with contractors on sensitive projects should treat access permissions as seriously as they would for permanent staff, and ideally more so, given the shorter relationship and lower institutional loyalty involved.
Investigator’s Reflection
This case has stuck with me because of how easily it could have gone unresolved. Had the studio not kept detailed version history on its file-sharing platform, we would have been left arguing timing and inference rather than demonstrable fact, and we doubt the eventual settlement would have been reached as quickly, or at all. It is a point we make to almost every creative or design-led client now: the systems you use for entirely practical reasons — version control, file access logs, even basic cloud storage audit trails — often turn out to be your best protection when something goes wrong, provided they are retained for long enough and not routinely purged for storage reasons.
