Tesla is suing a former worker and software program engineer named Alex Khatilov, alleging commerce secret theft and breach of contract.

Within the grievance, the corporate accuses Khatilov of grabbing code and information from WARP Drive, a back-end software program system that Tesla developed to automate a spread of enterprise processes concerned in manufacturing and promoting its automobiles. Additionally they accuse him of deleting doable proof when safety groups confronted him.

Khatilov was employed to assist Tesla’s High quality Assurance staff create software program that would automate duties or enterprise processes associated to Setting, Well being and Security.

The grievance says he started working for Tesla on December 28, 2020, and nearly instantly started importing information and scripts (written in a programming language referred to as Python) to his Dropbox account. Tesla confronted him about his alleged theft on January sixth.

The code is of concern to Tesla as a result of it may disclose to opponents “which techniques Tesla believes are necessary and priceless to automate and how you can automate them – offering a roadmap to repeat Tesla’s innovation,” the grievance says.

This is not the primary time that Tesla has sued or accused ex-employees of commerce theft. Tesla sued Guangzhi Cao for copying Autopilot supply code to his private accounts and gadgets in late 2018. That case remains to be ongoing.

The corporate additionally sued former staff who wound up at different electrical and autonomous car companies, Rivian and Zoox, over alleged theft of mental property.

Tesla revealed within the new grievance on Friday that solely 40 individuals of about 50,000 whole staff work on the corporate’s High quality Assurance staff that employed Khatilov. The corporate additionally says it has spent an estimated “200 man-years of labor” to develop the code in query.

The case is right here: