Tesla Settles Lawsuit Against Former Autopilot Program Director Accused of Stealing Info, Engineers (electrek.co)

Earlier this year, Tesla filed a lawsuit against its former director of Autopilot Programs, Sterling Anderson, for stealing proprietary information about the Autopilot program and recruiting fellow Tesla engineers to work with him at Aurora Innovation, another autonomous driving company. According to Electrek, "the lawsuit was settled today with Tesla withdrawing their allegations without damages and Aurora agreeing to make itself available for an audit by a third-party to make sure they don't have proprietary information from Tesla's Autopilot program." From the report: Aurora also agreed to cover the cost of the audit for up to $100,000. The startup claims that it had already ordered its own audit, which found âoeno material Tesla confidential information." As for the allegations of poaching employees, Aurora has agreed not to reach out to Tesla employees for a year and to release the names of former Tesla employees who have joined the startup already. You can read Auroraâ(TM)s statement about the settlement in full here and Teslaâ(TM)s further down below: âoeSelf-driving vehicles will save lives, preserve resources, and make transportation more accessible and enjoyable for everyone. Aurora was founded on the premise that experience, innovative thinking, hard work, and a commitment to doing the right thing can accelerate this future..."

Comments

What am I missing?

[fiannaFailMan]

When did it become illegal to recruit from a competing company? Did they have some sort of non-poaching agreement? TFA doesn't mention any such thing.

Re:What am I missing?

[Mr D from 63]

I thought non-poaching agreements were found to be against the law.

Such agreements between two companies are generally not legal, but no-compete clauses or similar wording in employment contracts that limits and employee from taking talent with them if they leave are not necessarily covered by that same ruling.

"Autopilot"

[Tablizer]

When I hear "autopilot", I can't get those Airplane! scenes out of my head.

Boy have things changed since the 1980s

[Orangedog_on_crack]

No one seemed to have a problem back when Jobs poached several Xerox PARC engineers to recreate the tech he couldnt get the company to give him unrestricted access to everything he wanted for the Lisa and Macintosh products. Of course if crap like the DMCA were around in the 1970s Gates, Allen and Jobs would probably have died in prison and Ed Roberts and Gary Kildall would be billionaires.