Report to police and solicitor

Hi At no time was I ever going to share the information with anyone else, new employer for example I was in sales mainly commission based hence why I copied my sales figures etc I received a letter stating they had accepted my resignation and was formally on garden leave The letter also pointed me towards some paragraph in my contract which they stated was enclosed, no copy was enclosed!

As silly as it sounds the law states it is not their property as it's not a physical thing Had I copied it onto a drive belonging to them and removed it outside the workplace then theft of the drive would have occurred As only a copy was made nothing was stolen as the original still exists There may be something in my contract (which I have never seen or signed)! But as far as a crime being committed it has not I guess people need to secure their data better! No malice was intended when I copied the info it was only to be used for reference to monies owed There are quite a few case studies where massive amounts of data were copied by old employees but were not classed as theft and thrown out of court

The USB drive is mine I copied a record of my sales to date, customers names, prices, I keep a spreadsheet of all my sales it calculated sale price less cost then profit so I know how much commission I should be due Some sales will not wash out for months, after I'm long gone so I would have no way of checking what I was owed without it

Evening I have recently resigned and am on garden leave I was in commission based sales I copied my sales data to a USB drive and left it in a cupboard at work My employer has said I copied data and is threatening legal action but the info has never left the premises I cannot go into work now to prove it How can it be theft when I have not removed it from work?