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Microsoft employee Laurent Chavet was arrested last week on allegations that he had illegaly accessed former employer AltaVista's computer system.

According to a report in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the 29-year-old French national copied source code related to AltaVista's crawler technology to his home computer.

Chavent's role at Microsoft has apparently not been defined officially by the company, but it has been suggested that he was involved with MSN search development.

Microsoft has been hard at work revamping their own MSN search to better compete in the search industry. Although the Redmond giant has not been implicated in any involvement or wrongdoing whatsoever, the indictment of one of their employees for bot-napping from a former employer is sure to raise some eyebrows. Particularly when the former employer in question is AltaVista, a long term heavy-hitter in the search industry.

Chavent claims his actions were borne of curiosity.

Mike is a manager at iEntry. He has been with iEntry since 2000.