Tesla sues Zoox for its manufacturing and logistics secrets

On Wednesday night, Tesla sued four former employees and Zoox, a self-initiated startup, for misappropriation of trade secrets. No, you have not seen the lawsuit as a driverless secret car deal – you just remember the time last year when Waymo and Uber settled their own business secrets case after four days of trial.

Tesla's lawsuit, filed in the Northern California Federal Court, alleges that four of its former employees took confidential information relating to "warehousing, logistics and inventory control operations" when it was not necessary to take into account the fact. they left the electric car business and later, while they were working for Zoox, used this proprietary information to improve its technology and operations.

Tesla said former employees – Scott Turner, Sydney Cooper, Chris Dement and Craig Emigh – were working in product distribution and warehouse supervision. He alleges that they have forwarded the trade secrets to their personal email accounts or accounts of other former Tesla employees. "You're a sneaky dog, you …" Turner would have written in the body of an e-mail that he would have sent himself, adding "reception and inventory procedures" Tesla's confidential and proprietary, as well as internal diagrams and line drawings of the physical layout of some Tesla warehouses, "Tesla lawyers write in their complaint.

Tesla alleges that other documents taken by Zoox employees include confidential information on the price of parts; a Tesla "service campaign" for model X butterfly doors; Detailed information about the electric vehicle company's "WARP" system, described by Tesla as proprietary software that helps it track and document inventory as it enters Tesla warehouses and distribution systems. Tesla said that Emigh had seized one of his proprietary documents, bearing "the Zoox logo" on it, and had sent it to Cooper, another former Tesla employee, but at the same time he was not allowed. Cooper's old email, but not his Zoox. a.

Although Tesla's court record does not contain any evidence that Zoox was aware of the alleged theft of trade secrets, the electric car company's lawyers write that the company "knew or ought to have known in the circumstances that the information diverted were trade secret information ".

The cases of trade secrets can be complex. Legally, the definition of a commercial secret is nebulous: it is a "formula, a model, a compilation, a program, a device, a method, a technique or a process" kept confidential within a company. But to prove that what the former employees would have taken was a trade secretand not just sensitive information, a complainant like Tesla should prove that he was striving to do everything possible to keep it strictly confidential. It should be proven that secrets could not be obtained by other more kosher processes, such as reverse engineering. And it would be necessary to prove that this information allowed Zoox to save money, time and a significant work force.

Tesla, however, would not have to prove that Zoox knew what his employees were doing – the law makes the corporation liable for the actions of its employees.

Zoox refused to comment on the trial. The Foster City-based company is unique among driverless vehicle startups: it wants to build and operate its own extensive network of driverless vehicles and by the end of 2020. And these vehicles, Zoox promised, will not look like to your conventional car. : They will be built from the ground so as to be completely driverless, without steering wheel, without pedals, or even in front. Zoox officials promised that the vehicle would be "bidirectional", meaning that it would be able to move back and forth without turning. Bloomberg announced this week that the company plans to raise more than $ 645 million in funding for the launch of its service in 2020.

In a subpoena proposal filed Wednesday, Tesla suggests the court give Zoox and the four former employees 21 days to respond to his complaint.

And this is not the only lawsuit filed this week by Tesla's legal team on intellectual property. In a separate lawsuit filed Thursday in northern California, the electric car company also sued a former employee and autopilot engineer named Guangzhi Cao. The company says that before leaving Tesla in January, Cao had loaded more than 300,000 files and directories, as well as copies of Tesla source code repositories, into a personal cloud storage account. Cao is now an employee of Tesla's Chinese rival, Xiaopeng Motors Technology Co., or XMotors, who is also looking to build a standalone electrical technology, including a feature similar to an autopilot called X-Pilot.

"Needless to say, Tesla's confidential information is not protected in the hands of XMotors or its employees," Tesla wrote in his complaint. The initial conference for this The trial is scheduled for mid-June.

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