Tesla Inc. has filed a lawsuit against a former engineer, alleging that he illegally downloaded proprietary knowledge about the company's supercomputer technology to his own computer and then handed over a "dummy" laptop for examination to hide the theft.
Tesla is creating “Project Dojo”, an in-house supercomputer that will handle large amounts of data, including video from Tesla cars, and will be used to develop autonomous driving software.
According to Tesla's complaint, Alexander Yatskov was employed in January as a thermal engineer to assist in the design of cooling systems for the computer, which generates a lot of heat. These thermal designs and data are confidential and tightly guarded within Tesla.
After being approached, Yatskov admitted to downloading the confidential material from his Tesla devices to his personal devices. To cover his traces, he handed over a "dummy" PC to Tesla for inspection, according to the company.
Tesla also accused its ex-employee of lying about his skills and professional experience on his resume. He also broke a non-disclosure agreement that prohibited him from revealing trade secrets.
Tesla is seeking compensatory and exemplary damages and an order that would stop Yatskov from disseminating its trade secrets and direct him to return all proprietary data.
