04 Dec misappropriation of computer files

IT data (files) they qualify as movable things under the criminal law e, therefore, theft from a corporate personal computer constitutes embezzlement conduct, entrusted for business purposes, of the computer data placed there, subsequently proceeding with the cancellation of the same data and the return of the 'formatted' computer. The Court justified the decision on the finding that, while lacking the requirement of materially perceptible apprehension of the file in itself considered – except when it is fixed on a digital support that contains it – , the qualification of the same as a mobile thing derives from the possibility of measuring its extension and the ability to contain data, as well as the susceptibility of being transferred from one IT support to another, even without the intervention of physical structures directly apprehensible by man (Cass. 11959/20).