You'll note that Alsup's comment at sentencing was "this is the biggest trade secret crime I have ever seen. This was not small. This was massive in scale."

You'll note that Alsup's comment at sentencing was "this is the biggest trade secret crime I have ever seen. This was not small. This was massive in scale." He downloaded 10G of confidential files from his employer onto a thumb drive and then founded a startup that was immediately acquired by one of his employer's biggest competitors, with evidence that the startup was only founded as a front for the theft of trade secrets. Those who are less brazen not only don't end up in court, but they often end up with $100B+ companies. You don't see any prison time for the Traitorous Eight who left Shockley to found Fairchild, Moore & Noyce who left Fairchild to found Intel, Jerry Sanders who left Fairchild to start AMD, Morris Chang leaving Texas Instruments to found TSMC, Marc Andreesen leaving Mosaic to start Netscape, or Steve Jobs's visit to Xerox Parc to see the Alto and bring all its innovations to the Lisa & Macintosh.