On January 23, Tesla sued former employee Alex Khatilov for stealing 26,000 confidential documents, including trade secrets. The software engineer moved the sensitive files to his personal Dropbox. Khatilov allegedly stole files from the automaker’s internal network . Among them were documents related to Warp Drive software. Warp Drive is a proprietary back-end software system used to automate business processes.
According to the complaint, the former Tesla employee was one of the few employees with access to the files and began stealing company data within days of being hired. Specifically, CNBC reports the following: “The complaint says Khatilov started working for Tesla on December 28, 2020, and almost immediately began uploading files and scripts (written in Python) to account . Tesla confronted him about the alleged theft on January 6.” his Dropbox
The defendant claimed that he “forgot” that he had downloaded the files and could not justify his downloads. In more detail, the complaint states the following: “Tesla’s trade secrets are extremely valuable to the company and would be equally valuable to a competitor. Access to the scripts would allow engineers at other companies to reverse engineer Tesla’s automated processes to create a similar automated system in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost that it took Tesla to build it. Third-party engineers would not be able to synthesize these scripts based on public information, let alone with minimal time and effort. The scripts would also inform competitors about the systems that Tesla believes are important and valuable to automate and how to automate them – thus providing a roadmap for copying Tesla’s innovation.”
Khatilov told New York that he had accidentally transferred the files to Dropbox. He also stated the following: “I have been working in this industry for 20 years and I know what sensitive documents are about and I never tried to access any of them or steal them. I didn’t know there were 26,000 files there.”
However, according to Security Affairs, the automaker has a different view, accusing its former employee of trying to cover up the theft. Specifically, the company claimed that the defendant attempted to destroy evidence by deleting his Dropbox client and other files at the beginning of the interview, when investigators were trying to gain remote access to his computer.
Additionally, Khatilov stated in an interview with the New York Post that he was unaware that Tesla had filed a lawsuit against him until the newspaper contacted him.
Tesla has filed other lawsuits in the past to protect its proprietary data . In December 2020, the company sued former processing technician Martin Tripp, who admitted to leaking confidential information to a journalist. Also in 2019, Tesla sued the automaker “Zoox,” accusing four of its employees — who previously worked at Tesla — of stealing confidential documents. The case was settled last April, with Zoox admitting that some of its new Tesla hires stole Tesla documents. The case of Guangzhi Cao, who Tesla accuses of stealing files related to Tesla’s Autopilot system, is also ongoing.
