Tesla sues former engineer for stealing supercomputer tech secrets

SAN FRANCISCO: Elon Musk-run Tesla has sued a former engineer for allegedly stealing “confidential and tightly guarded” secrets related to supercomputer technology.

The Verge reported, citing court documents, that the electric car-maker has sued Alexander Yatskov for downloading the confidential information to his personal devices which he declined to give back.

Yatskov violated company’s policies by “removing Tesla confidential information from work devices and accounts, accessing it on his own personal devices, and creating Tesla documents containing confidential Project Dojo details on a personal computer”.

Tesla said that it also discovered Yatskov sending emails with classified information from his personal email address to his work email.

Tesla has suing Yatskov for compensatory and exemplary damages, seeking a court order for Yatskov to return the classified information.

Last year, the electric car-maker sued a former software engineer for allegedly stealing trade secrets from its internal systems.

The lawsuit against Alex Khatilov alleged that he stole filed from Tesla’s internal Warp Drive software.

The company also accused him of “deleting possible evidence when security teams confronted him”, according to reports.

In 2019, Tesla sued self-driving startup Zoox accusing four of its employees who earlier worked at Tesla for stealing confidential documents.

The case was later settled, with Zoox admitting that “certain of its new hires from Tesla” were in possession of Tesla documents.

Another case against Guangzhi Cao, accused of stealing files related to Tesla’s Autopilot system, was ongoing.