The German police have raided Toyota's Formula One base, seized software and arrested an unnamed individual who, apparently, used to work for Ferrari as an aerodynamicist. It is reported that the move by the German police came as a result of a complaint from Ferrari to the Modena police. It must be stressed that the action has been taken against an individual and not the Toyota team. Further, we must assume that the individual is innocent unless proven guilty.

The case may not be open and shut. When engineers change teams, they take with them a great deal of information. There is no doubt that teams have offered excellent terms to some engineers on this basis alone. The new guy arrives at Tweedledee F1 from Tweedledum Grand Prix and he has to change loyalties and part of his mission is to tell Tweedledee everything he knows about Tweedledum, which is now a rival.

This is why, when Adrian Newey, wished to join McLaren, Williams refused to release him from his contract. Williams also refused to have him round the factory so he was sent home on 'gardening leave', legally bound not to have any contact with McLaren while Williams continued to pay him.

Newey's brain could not be wiped clean of everything he knew about Williams's plans, of course, but Williams could ensure he learned nothing new.

It is a rare job where this is an issue. In practically any occupation you can name, you can leave one job on a Friday and start another on the following Monday, and the same is also true about most jobs in motor racing. It's the people with the inside knowledge who are regarded as risks.

It would seem the current case alleges theft. If so, it will not be the first case. In the early 1970s three McLaren employees stole a complete set of plans for a McLaren Indycar. Two skipped to America, where a McLaren copy was made. The third received a three-month prison sentence for industrial espionage.

The McLaren copy raced at Indianapolis in 1970 and 1971, never made anywhere near the front of the grid and did not finish in either year.

That was an open-and-shut case. Plans were filched one weekend when the factory was closed. The blueprints would have been a huge bundle of paper, but now you could have it all on a single CD which you could take out in your Walkman. Is it really as simple as as some movies suggest? A new genre of films involving computers has developed and there seems no end to the number where the plot revolves around a disk or CD will a value beyond your weight in diamonds.

Let me put a hypothetical case. You are working for Tweedledum and, before you take up your new post with Tweedledee, you feel that you would like to take data with you. You are not going to tell anyone at Tweedledee that you have this data, but rather you are going to use it to make yourself look absolutely brilliant. In fact, you cannot afford to tell a single person, not only might word get out, but you are not going to look so brilliant and, besides, nobody will trust you ever again.

You are not going to be able to simply burn a CD during your lunch break. It used to be able to happen, and happen it did. It used to be as easy as making a copy of a friend's tape of Spears Sings Stockhausen. Computer Assisted Design (CAD) took longer to reach motor racing than it did in the regular car industry and I suspect that the ease that early systems permitted the transfer of information was part of the reason. We speak of Formula One, where everyone has an angle.

I don't know what CAD systems are used in the factories of Formula One teams, but I am prepared to bet that it takes a great deal more to download stuff from them than you or I downloading Michael Flatley Taps The Best of Elvis from the Internet. I should imagine it takes a great deal more cunning to download from an F1-spec CAD system than going into an empty factory at a weekend and running off a set of blueprints.

The problem with industrial espionage is that it is a morally ambiguous area. I have copied tape cassettes which makes me a thief, but ask me if I have ever stolen anything and I will admit only to once scrumping apples as a kid. Ask yourself, if you were offered a copy of a favourite disc, would you accept it? Is that really so different from going into a shop and nicking a CD?