- Tesla filed a complaint Friday in which he accused an engineer of stealing trade secrets.
- Tesla said engineer Alex Khatilov was hired on Dec. 28 and began transferring files within days.
- According to reports, Alex Khatilov denies the allegations.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Tesla filed a lawsuit in court Friday, saying a software engineer had transferred about 26,000 confidential documents, including trade secrets, to his personal Dropbox during his first week at the company.
Senior software quality assurance engineer Alex Khaitov began work at Tesla on December 28, 2020, and began downloading sensitive files almost immediately, according to Tesla.
“Within three days of being appointed by Tesla, the accused stole a thousand trade secret computer scripts that took Tesla years to develop,” Tesla said in a complaint filed Friday in the San Jose division of the U.S. District Court of the North District of California.
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Tesla is suing Khaitov, accusing him of stealing trade secret and confidential information, along with violating his contract. According to Tesla, Khatilov was fired when internal investigators discovered the file transfers.
According to a MailOnline report, Alex Khatilov denies the allegations.
Tesla Model Y.
Tesla
Khatilov became the youngest person in Silicon Valley to be accused of stealing Te lsa trade secrets. Former Tesla employees working at Zoox were sued in 2019.
In March 2020, Tesla sued a rival, Rivian, saying its employees also stole trade secrets. According to a court statement in December, Martin Tripp, a former Tesla process technician, would pay $ 400,000 to share trade secrets.
Only about 40 people in Khatilov’s team of quality assurance engineers, according to Tesla, have access to the trade secrets he accused of stealing. Within the group, only 8 engineers were able to grant access to the files, the company said.
The company said it tracked down Khatilov’s downloads on January 6.
Khatilov gave company investigators access to his Dropbox, saying he had only transferred a few personal administrative documents, according to Tesla.
Tesla said investigators were looking at his Dropbox account. They discovered that ‘allegations were outright lies’ and said he had transferred ‘thousands and thousands’ of Tesla’s computer scripts to his personal Dropbox.
Tesla said: “Then he lied about it and tried to erase the evidence of his theft when he was quickly confronted by Tesla’s security team, which forced Tesla to bring this charge.”
According to the company, Khatilov told investigators that he “forgot” the files, adding that it was “almost certainly another lie.”
On Friday, Khatilov spoke to The New York Post, saying: ‘I’ve been working in this industry for 20 years, and I know what sensitive documents are about, and I’ve never tried to access one of these sources, or steal it. ‘
The Post said Khatilov had heard from his reporter about the lawsuit. An interview request sent by Insider to Khatilov’s personal email address was not immediately returned Saturday.
Tesla said during the filing that he had instructed Khatilov to delete the files he could see in his Dropbox account. But the company could not be sure that the engineer had not transferred them somewhere else.
Tesla said: “Once the defendant uploaded the stolen files to his Dropbox account, he could indeed share or re-transfer those files to someone or any other storage media (whether an external thumb drive, another computer, a mobile device). or cloud-based storage system). And Tesla would not know it. “
The company said investigators had to remotely interrogate Khatilov because of COVID-19, meaning they were unable to ensure “complete removal” of his devices.
The company is seeking a jury trial and damages.