by Drew Harwell, Washington Post

The massive heist from the world’s biggest sportswear firm was, as Nike attorneys allege, an inside job.

Nike vs Adidas

Faking a broken laptop, one of the sneaker giant’s top directors is said to have met secretly with an interloper to copy some of what a Nike lawsuit this week called the firm’s “most important and highly confidential” intelligence.

Days later, the director and two other elite designers defected to the firm’s bitter rival, allegedly scrubbing e-mails and text messages that, attorneys said, hid “evidence of their betrayals.”

 The claims of stealth and subterfuge have reignited Nike’s decades-long sneaker war with Adidas, the German-based shoe titan and Nike’s chief competitor. But they have also cast a spotlight on the high-stakes palace intrigue hidden beneath the world’s fiercely competitive, multibillion-dollar sneaker and sportswear empire.
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Nike has for years guarded the mystique of its secretive research-and-design labs, called the Innovation Kitchen and the Zoo. In the past two years, the company has invested more than $1.5 million in a company-wide security campaign, called “Keep It Tight,” designed to safeguard its trade secrets.

The lawsuit alleges a staggering breach. The designers, attorneys said, fled with thousands of documents outlining Nike’s long-term business strategy, unreleased shoe and uniform designs, and even details of “highly confidential and proprietary virtual footwear product design and computer simulation testing methodology.”

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