Elon Musk’s company Tesla has sued a former engineer for allegedly stealing “confidential and closely guarded” supercomputer technology secrets.
According to court documents obtained by The Verge, Tesla has sued Alexander Yatskov for downloading confidential information to his personal devices and refusing to return it.
Yatskov violated company policies by “removing Tesla confidential information from work devices and accounts, accessing it on his own personal devices, and creating Tesla documents on a personal computer containing confidential Project Dojo details.”
Tesla also stated that it discovered Yatskov sending classified emails from his personal email address to his work email address.
Tesla has filed a lawsuit against Yatskov for compensatory and exemplary damages, as well as a court order requiring Yatskov to return the classified information.
The electric vehicle manufacturer sued a former software engineer last year for allegedly stealing trade secrets from its internal systems.
According to the lawsuit, Alex Khatilov stole files from Tesla’s internal Warp Drive software.
According to reports, the company also accused him of “deleting possible evidence when security teams confronted him.”
Tesla sued self-driving startup Zoox in 2019, accusing four of its employees who previously worked for Tesla of stealing confidential documents.
The case was eventually settled, with Zoox admitting that “certain of its new hires from Tesla” had Tesla documents.
Another case was ongoing against Guangzhi Cao, who was accused of stealing files related to Tesla’s Autopilot system.