"It is conceivable that XYZ Corporation now has a non-disclosure agreement with our company to work together on a project involving the alloy in the materials specification that the boss gave me. On the other hand, it is possible that a person at a mutual customer of ours wants the alloy offered by XYZ, but made by us... and they thought they could get it by passing along information provided to them in confidence by XYZ. In which case, why didn't my boss already refuse it? I need to know where the information came from. I would ask my boss the circumstances under which he obtained the information, and I would ask him if he checked in with our legal department to verify that using the information would be ok. I think I would just listen at that point. My next move after that would, frankly, depend on whether what he said hung together or not. If the provenance of the information was above board - i.e. if XYZ and my company have an agreement to work together on a customer project, then fine. I would get to work. But if the spec was handed to my boss under the table, I want nothing to do with that, regardless of how amazing the results would be. It would be illegal. I would call our ethics hotline and report what had happened and ask them what to do next. I realize this could be a bit touchy with my boss, and I would probably try to evade the subject until I had advice back from our legal department. Then I would do as they advised."
