Report
Tesla Inc
1 Tesla Road
Phone: (512) 516-8177p:512 516-8177 AUSTIN, TX  78725  United States Ticker: TSLATSLA

Tesla Claims Engineer Stole Secrets Just Three Days on the Job


(Bloomberg) -- A former Tesla Inc. software engineer was ordered to appear before a judge to face allegations that three days into his job, he started stealing confidential files and transferring them to a personal storage account. During his two-week employment ending Jan. 6, Alex Khatilov stole more than 6,000 scripts, or files of code, that automate a broad range of business functions, Tesla argues in its trade-secret theft complaint. Tesla convinced U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers that the threat posed is serious enough that she granted a restraining order Friday requiring Khatilov to immediately preserve and return all files, records and emails to the company and appear before her, remotely, on Feb. 4.

Elon Musk's electric-car maker has aggressively pursued lawsuits against other former employees and rival companies that it has accused of poaching engineers and stealing proprietary data. A software automation engineer, Khatilov was hired as one of a "select few Tesla employees" to have access to the files, which the company says were unrelated to his job. Tesla says it was forced to file the lawsuit because Khatilov lied about his theft and tried to delete evidence of it.

Tesla to Apple: Help Us Nail Robocar-Secrets Thief at China FirmKhatilov told Tesla security that he had only transferred a couple personal administrative documents, according to a court filing. After investigators found thousands of confidential files, the engineer said he forgot about them and tried to destroy them at the start of the interview, Tesla says, adding that it doesn't know if he previously copied or sent the files to other locations." The scripts are extremely valuable to Tesla, and they would be to a competitor," according to the filing. "Access to these scripts would enable engineers at other companies to reverse engineer Tesla's processes to create a similar system in a fraction of the time and with a fraction of the expense."

Khatilov couldn't immediately be reached for comment and court records don't indicate that he has a lawyer.

The New York Post reported on the case earlier. The newspaper quoted Khatilov denying allegations of wrongdoing and explaining that he downloaded the data by mistake and deleted the files from Dropbox at Tesla's request. The case is Tesla v. Khatilov, 21-cv-00528, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (San Jose).

Related Businesses
- - Customer
Copyright © 2024 by CreditRiskMonitor.com (Ticker: CRMZ®). All rights reserved.  You are not permitted to use this report or the information contained herein for any purpose not expressly permitted by CreditRiskMonitor.com, Inc. Except as expressly permitted by CreditRiskMonitor.com, Inc., you are not permitted, in whole or in part, to copy, alter, correct, adapt, translate, enhance, lease, sell, sublicense, assign, distribute, publish, otherwise make available to any third party, or prepare derivative works or improvements of this report or any of the information contained therein. You are not permitted to reverse engineer, disassemble, decompile, decode, or adapt the software, algorithms or other processes used to prepare this report, or otherwise attempt to derive or gain access to the source code of same. You agree not to remove, alter, obscure, combine or otherwise change any disclaimers, trademarks, copyrights, other intellectual property rights, proprietary rights, or other symbols, notices, marks, or serial numbers on or relating to any copy of the report or on marketing or other materials that CreditRiskMonitor.com, Inc. may provide to you. You will not use this report in any manner or for any purpose that infringes, misappropriates, or otherwise violates any right of any party, or that violates any applicable law.  
The FRISK® scores, agency ratings, credit limit recommendations and other scores, analysis and commentary are opinions of CreditRiskMonitor.com, Inc. and/or its suppliers, not statements of fact, and should be one of several factors in making credit decisions.  Any reliance you place on the information in this report is strictly at your own risk. Except as expressly provided by CreditRiskMonitor.com, Inc., no warranties or representations of any type, including without limitation of results to be obtained, merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose, are made concerning any part of CreditRiskMonitor.com, Inc.’s service, including without limitation the FRISK® scores.  The information published above has been obtained from sources CreditRiskMonitor considers to be reliable.  CreditRiskMonitor.com, Inc. and its third-party suppliers do not guarantee or validate the accuracy and completeness of the information provided in this report, the underlying information input to create the FRISK® scores, and specifically do not assume responsibility for not reporting any information omitted or withheld.  By using this website, you accept the Terms of Use Agreement. 
Contact Us: 845.230.3000
Fundamental financial data concerning public companies may be provided by Refinitiv (click for restrictions)
Wednesday, April 24, 2024