Quote:
Originally Posted by PrematureApex
Is this a serious post?
If the cars are displayed at a damn auto show, even in a pre/press only event, anything visible is not a trade secret, but its very definition. In fact, by not actively preventing people from looking at their displays, they are forfeiting the right to claim it's a trade secret. The cars are sitting there for public display (that includes members of the press). It's all fair game.
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I'm with this guy.
Frankly, when I saw a bunch of Asian folks trying to take pics during a factory tour (it was several years ago, but IIRC, it was at BMW in Munich), that would be more apt to be considered industrial espionage. But even then, the tour is open to the public and if they didn't want people to see the technology used to make the cars, they wouldn't offer factor tours.
Once you open anything up to the public, it's all fair game. Would the OP consider it espionage when companies buy cars from other brands to reverse engineer them--a practice that is very widely done? Heck, we've all read magazine articles where they talk about competitor cars that were benchmarked during the development of a particular vehicle.
I'm sure industrial espionage is alive and well in the auto industry, but this isn't it.