There are absolutely laws about IP theft. That's why it's called Intellectual Property.

You really don't want the law to be "Well you didn't lose a physical thing, so why should it be illegal?"

> You really don't want the law to be "Well you didn't lose a physical thing, so why should it be illegal?"

There are people who feel this way, so it's possible that the parent comment does actually want it to be this. You're 100% correct that this doesn't describe the law right now though, which is what actually matters for this lawsuit.

Actually we really unironically do want it to be exactly like that. I don’t care if every negative externality claimed to happen happens tenfold as a result. Even 1/10th of the claimed positive externalities makes it so worth it.

Copyright trolls are ontologically evil.

It isn't ever quite that simple. It also depends whether that person only used information that is publicly available to deduce how to do it at the new company.