Borrowed Password, New Firm

A regional director at an executive search firm was passed over for promotion and left, staying on briefly as a contractor while quietly setting up a rival firm with two colleagues. His own computer access was cut off. Prosecutors said he and the others then used the login of an employee who had stayed behind to get into the firm's database of more than a million executives and download candidate lists. The disputed point is whether using a current employee's password, with her blessing, counts as access without authorisation.