The Court of Cassation, with judgement No. 25147/2017, stated that dismissal of an employee who copies confidential corporate data on a personal pen drive, without the employer authorisation, is legitimate, even if this information is not disclosed to third parties. This is because the violation of contractual duties also occurs when a particular conduct, even if it does not result in actual damage, has intrinsic potential to become detrimental to the interests of the employer. The Court deemed the dismissal legitimate since the conduct contested to the employee was to be considered as censurable pursuant to the provisions of Article 52 of the CCNL for the chemical sector applied in the company. Specifically, the aforesaid article includes among the cases punishable by dismissal: theft, voluntary damage to corporate assets and theft of drawings, tools and sheets owned by the company. According to the Court of Cassation, the simple copying of data falls within these cases, having identified in the behaviour of the worker a conscious conduct, respect to which the lack of IT measures by the employer to protect the data was completely irrelevant.
