A Santa Clark court has ordered Toshiba to pay Lexar $465 million essentially for violating a non disclosure agreement (NDA).

Some accuse me of not caring about copyright or patent rights. This is neither. It's a trade secrets case. But this is a righteous bust.

The individual responsible for all this, according to the court, was Toshiba employee Hideo Ito. Ito joined the board of Lexar, then a raw start-up, in 1997, and leaked its trade secrets for flash memory not only to his employers but also to SanDisk, the leader in the flash memory field.

Why is this a righteous bust? Because small outfits like Lexar have to align with big outfits like Toshiba in order to take on large rivals like SanDisk. It's the only way they can reach the market. If that confidence is not secured then small companies never have a chance.

It's also righteous because, in this case, Lexar really did have a multi-billion dollar idea.

The flash techniques Lexar pioneered are now at the heart of flash devices used in digital cameras, game players, phones -- just about everything we buy. They are important to the mobility revolution as the hard disk in the iPod. Given the size of the market, and given the fact that, thanks to Ito's betrayal Lexar was about to go under, one could even argue that Toshiba got off cheap.