Tesla Sues Former Employees For Allegedly Stealing Data, Autopilot Source Code (reuters.com)

Tesla is suing a former engineer at the company, claiming he copied the source code for its Autopilot technology before joining a Chinese self-driving car startup in January. Reuters reports: The engineer, Guangzhi Cao, copied more than 300,000 files related to Autopilot source code as he prepared to join China's Xiaopeng Motors Technology Company Ltd, the Silicon Valley carmaker said in the lawsuit filed in a California court. Separately, Tesla lawyers on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against four former employees and U.S. self-driving car startup Zoox Inc, alleging the employees stole proprietary information and trade secrets for developing warehousing, logistics and inventory control operations. The Verge reported on the lawsuit filed against Cao: Tesla says that last year, Cao started uploading "complete copies of Tesla's Autopilot-related source code" to his iCloud account. The company claims he ultimately moved more than 300,000 files and directories related to Autopilot. After accepting a job with XPeng at the end of last year, Tesla says Cao deleted 120,000 files off his work computer and disconnected his personal iCloud account, and then "repeatedly logged into Tesla's secure networks" to clear his browser history before his last day with the company. Tesla also claims Cao recruited another Autopilot employee to XPeng in February. Tesla claims that it gives XPeng "unfettered access" to Autopilot: "Absent immediate relief, Tesla believes Cao and his new employer, [XPeng], will continue to have unfettered access to Tesla's marquee technology, the product of more than five years' work and over hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, which they have no legal right to possess," the company's lawyers write.

Comments

Chinese engineers stealing trade secrets???

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm shocked. SHOCKED! Well, not that shocked.

Re:Chinese engineers stealing trade secrets???

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. Repeat after me: No NASA without Dr. Merkwürdigliebe.

Re:Chinese engineers stealing trade secrets???

[junglee_iitk]

Man H1B really messed up the "intellect". Indians steal code from The West?

Don't know if you lost a job to an Indian, but you are exactly the type of person who should.

Only demonstrates their own systemic problems.

[BlueCoder]

He could have simply been taking his work home with him... could have. That he could do such a thing shows their poor security and ability to protect their own supposed trade secrets. He did it for over a year and not just before he left the company. He could have understood it was "officially" forbidden but in practice it was not enforced which is proven by how he did it for over a year before he left the company. Theoretically he could have simply been covering up frowned upon ways he cut corners that he used in order to perform in his job better. Not sure I believe it but it is easily plausible. Based on this he shouldn't be sued now.

As far as the company that hired him... I wouldn't want to touch him if I intended to ever sell my cars in the western society; since it should be trivial to compel the company into an independent code review. Either for direct copyright infringement or code or against patents.

P.S. On a tangent... I think all software sold in all markets for all commercial products should have it's source code be forced to be confidentially registered. Makes it easier to catch cheaters. So companies can't go out of business or claim a fire ate their homework. Would also make it easier to do automated code comparisons.

Re:Only demonstrates their own systemic problems.

[quenda]

The company could still learn a huge amount without actually directly using the source code.

Why on earth would Tesla have ever allowed a Chinese national near their trade secrets?
I hope the US military is not so careless.

Re: Only demonstrates their own systemic problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because in the US he could sue them for discrimination AND WIN.

Re: Only demonstrates their own systemic problems.

[quenda]

Because in the US he could sue them for discrimination AND WIN.

I see. Google tells me that "national origin" is a protected class in US federal employment discrimination law. Also citizenship status.
This seems foolish.
Is there really no exception for bona fide security concerns outside military contractors?

You can be quite sure the Chinese would not allow westerners anywhere near their corporate secrets.

Re:Only demonstrates their own systemic problems.

[rtb61]

There is a reason to employ the individual, get that data, there is a reason to fire the individual, well they copied proprietary secrets from the previous company, after we have that data, why should we continue to trust them, they are very likely to do the same to us.

Re: Only demonstrates their own systemic problems.

[AmiMoJo]

Blocking people from jobs because of where they were born or their heritage is taking us right back to the 1930s.

As it happens Chinese companies do allow westerners near their secrets. Plenty of jobs for foreign engineers over there. They are also getting into open source, e.g. Creality has open sourced both the software and hardware for its very popular range of 3D printers.

Re: Only demonstrates their own systemic problems.

[jittles]

Because in the US he could sue them for discrimination AND WIN.

I see. Google tells me that "national origin" is a protected class in US federal employment discrimination law. Also citizenship status. This seems foolish. Is there really no exception for bona fide security concerns outside military contractors?

You can be quite sure the Chinese would not allow westerners anywhere near their corporate secrets.

You have no idea how absurd it is. I used to do work for the DoD that required US Citizenship. Was I allowed to ask people in an interview if they were US citizens? Nope. It was illegal. Never mind that the type of work we did required citizenship by law. We would have to find clever ways to determine if they were citizens. This is why most of those DoD jobs require active clearances to already be in the possession of the applicant.

To be clear, I don't really care where someone is from and it would not usually factor into my decision on whether or not to hire them. In that particular case, I had no choice but to hire US citizens, though. Anyone else I hired wouldn't have been allowed in our building. AT least, that particular building we were working out of.

Re: Only demonstrates their own systemic problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

can confirm, worked 2 years in Shenyang up north, had full run of office and resources, they were rather naive when it comes to security

lol the real security is that you'd have to know chinese yourself to even make sense of it

Re:Only demonstrates their own systemic problems.

[thegarbz]

Why on earth would Tesla have ever allowed a Chinese national near their trade secrets?

Because they are sane and likely agree that just because someone has black hair and yellow skin doesn't make them an undercover spy?

Re:Fishy

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think that Tesla is behind, then you obviously are not paying attention.

  About the only one close, if not beating them, might be Google. But the rest are way behind.

Re:Don't worry guise...

[LetterRip]

I wouldn't be too worried about this "theft." That source code is a huge trojan horse anyway, if I ever seen one. How many times has Tesla autopilot caused crashes, deaths, and mayhem so far?

Autopilot is a different code base from the self-driving. Autopilot is a lane keeping and adaptive cruise control that doesn't have anything to do with their self-driving code.

Re:Don't hire Chinese employees

[hcs_$reboot]

Not hiring women is being racist? Since when?

I would NEVER trust Zoox

[Drunkulus]

They could not do a simple thing like get me a date, then they charged me for an extra month. No way am I gonna let them drive my car.

Wonderful!

[fozzy1015]

Now Chinese cars can drive you into barriers and the back of fire trucks. At least this one found the hole: https://www.zerohedge.com/news...

just post the code - open source it

[AndrewFlagg]

just post the code, open source it -- come on Elon.. be more open about it.. think about the safety benefits you can gain from the whole world knowing how it works... you can be like the movies;; Hackers (Fisher Stevens as Eugene), Antitrust (Tim Robbins as Winston)...

Re: Fishy

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol that is literally all code running everything.

Re: Tesla advertises gift of Autopilot code to Chi

[c6gunner]

It is an awful idea, because you get a lot more radioactive waste than in the usual reactors

That's an interesting claim. Everything I've read says the opposite; that they produce far less waste. I don't suppose you have any citations.

Re:Fishy

[AmiMoJo]

Tesla has some level 2 driver assistance tech. Audi has level 3 but can't seem to get it approved for release, GM and Waymo/Google have full level 4 self driving.

Re:Don't worry guise...

[AmiMoJo]

Actually they are the same code base. For example Tesla uses machine vision to provide blind spot warnings using the side cameras, which is also used by the self driving code to know when the neighbouring lane is clear.

They are incrementally adding the features they need to get to full self driving, such as the ability to read traffic lights and road signs. Those features become available in the level 2 driving aids for live beta testing by their customers. That is their stated plan - let customers test the tech and train the AI.

Re:Fishy

[samwichse]

Just flag as spam.