Elon Musk‘s company Tesla has filed a lawsuit against a former engineer for allegedly stealing “sensitive and closely guarded” supercomputer technical secrets. According to court records obtained by The Verge, Tesla has sued Alexander Yatskov for downloading proprietary material on his personal devices, which he refused to return.
“Removing Tesla secret material from work devices and accounts, accessing it on his own personal devices, and generating Tesla papers with confidential Project Dojo data on a personal computer,” according to the company’s regulations. Tesla also observed Yatskov transmitting confidential material from his personal email address to his business email address, according to the company.
Elon Musk’s Tesla is suing Yatskov for compensatory and exemplary damages, as well as a court order for the sensitive material to be returned. The electric vehicle manufacturer sued a former software developer last year for allegedly stealing trade secrets from its internal systems. Alex Khatilov was accused of stealing files from Tesla’s internal Warp Drive software, according to the lawsuit.
Tesla also accused Yatskov of lying about his skills and professional experience on his résumé. He also broke a non-disclosure agreement, according to Tesla, by exposing trade secrets. “This is an instance of illegal trade secret retention by an employee who has previously proven a track record of lying and then lying again by delivering a ‘dummy’ device to attempt to conceal his tracks,” Tesla claimed in its lawsuit.
According to reports, the business reportedly accused him of “deleting possible evidence when security officials questioned him.” Tesla sued self-driving company Zoox in 2019, alleging four of its workers of stealing private secrets while working at Tesla. The dispute was eventually settled, with Zoox acknowledging that “some of its new recruits from Tesla” had Tesla documents in their hands.
Another case was still pending against Guangzhi Cao, who was suspected of stealing material pertaining to Tesla’s Autopilot technology.
