Tesla is suing a former employee for allegedly stealing company information, CNBC said. The company says that software engineer Alex Khatilov stole files from Tesla’s internal network related to the Warp Drive software, used to automate many of the company’s business processes. Tesla claims in the lawsuit that Khatilov moved files to his personal Dropbox account and that he was one of the few Tesla employees who had access to the files.
According to the lawsuit, Khatilov told Tesla investigators that he “forgot” to move the files to his personal Dropbox when they confronted him. He told the New York Post in an interview that he had accidentally moved the files to Dropbox, and was unaware that Tesla had filed a lawsuit against him until the newspaper contacted him.
Tesla has not hesitated to sue to protect its proprietary data in the past; in December the company made a deal with former process technician Martin Tripp, who admitted to leaking confidential information to a reporter. In 2019, Tesla sued the autonomous startup Zoox accusing four Zoox employees – who had previously worked at Tesla – of taking confidential documents. That case was resolved last April, with Zoox admitting that “some of your new Tesla contractors” were in possession of Tesla documents. And his case against Guangzhi Cao, which Tesla accuses of stealing files related to Tesla’s autopilot system, is still in progress.