To address his lawyer's admission... as I said modified open-source code becomes proprietary so the lawyer isn't wrong. That is why he said that he violated the confidentiality agreement but that isn't the same as stealing trade secret. A company's trade secret isn't the same thing as proprietary code.

One of the legal qualification of trade secrets is that it is a method, process, etc. that isn't known or reasonably known by others for gaining advantage over competitors. It is their secret sauce.

I don't see anything here that suggests he took the ALGORITHM or DECISION MAKING process, or any such thing.