The defendant, a student, was accused of theft after he obtained a draft of a paper for his forthcoming engineering exam. It was accepted that the paper itself had not been appropriated. The prosecutor appealed dismissal of the case, sayng that he was guilty of the theft of intangible property within section 4.
Held: information is not property for the purposes of theft. The confidentiality which inhered in the paper was a right over property and not a right in property. It was not intangible property.
Citations:
[1978] 68 Cr App Rep 183, [1979] Crim LR 119
Statutes:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Crime
Updated: 13 May 2022; Ref: scu.220549
