Sues trade secrets him engineer who series#

In 2011, while he was working in Massachusetts, he earned a master's degree in engineering management from Tufts University. in machine design from Moscow State University.

Previously, Yatskov spent a decade at supercomputer-maker Cray and then a decade at a Massachusetts firm called Thermal Form and Function. Yatskov earned a Ph.D. LinkedIn lists an Alexander Yatskov who lives in Manteca and has worked as a thermal engineer at Juniper Networks since March 2016. Yatskov is named on several Juniper patents. Tesla's complaint says Yatskov lives in Manteca, California. Yatskov resigned from Tesla on Monday, May 2. He allegedly seeded it with innocuous Tesla documents to make it look like he hadn't stolen Tesla's secrets. Tesla alleges that Yatskov logged in to the laptop only once in 2022: on the morning he brought it in. Instead, he brought in a 'dummy' laptop that had barely been used since 2020. But according to Tesla, Yatskov didn't bring in a laptop he had been using regularly in the preceding weeks. When confronted, Yatskov reportedly admitted to taking confidential information and promised to bring his personal laptop in for inspection by Tesla's security personnel. The company put him on administrative leave in April. Tesla says it caught Yatskov transferring confidential details about Project Dojo from Tesla's network to a personal computer. Dojo will use this data to train the neural networks that power Autopilot, Tesla's self-driving software.Īccording to Tesla, Yatskov was assigned to a team that 'runs complex simulations of how different thermal designs affect heat distribution, and in turn, affect the balancing of speed, power, safety, cost and environmental concerns.' Through its customers' vehicles, Tesla gathers vast quantities of real-world camera data. Yatskov was hired in January to work on Dojo, the supercomputer Tesla is building to train its self-driving software. The company accused its ex-employee, Alexander Yatskov, of transferring confidential information from Tesla's network to his personal laptop. Tesla on Friday sued a former thermal engineer for trade-secret theft. Previously, the company also sued a former employee who went to work at Xpeng after Tesla claimed that the engineer stole the Autopilot source code.įinally, Tesla also won a lawsuit against self-driving startup Zoox for the theft of some proprietary information related to its logistics systems.Michael Vi / Getty reader comments 105 with Tesla is currently suing Rivian and former employees hired by the EV startup over allegedly stealing information related to its “next-gen battery.” It’s not the first time that Tesla is suing former employees over alleged stolen information.

This is a case about illicit retention of trade secrets by an employee who, in his short time at Tesla, already demonstrated a track record of lying and then lying again by providing a “dummy” device to try and cover his tracks.Īs part of the lawsuitTesla is seeking “compensatory and exemplary damages and an order that would stop Yatskov from disseminating its trade secrets and direct him to return all proprietary data.” Yatskov ended up resigning from Tesla on May 2.

Tesla claims that the engineer brought the company a “dummy laptop” that was set up to make it look like he only accessed “inoffensive Tesla information, like an offer letter” and not trade secrets related to Dojo. He was placed on administrative leave starting April 6, 2022, and asked to bring Tesla his personal laptop to recover the allegedly stolen information. In the lawsuit, the company claims that Yatskov admitted to stealing the information when confronted about it. Tesla claims that quickly after starting the job, Yatskov started downloading “confidential and tightly guarded” information related to the Dojo supercomputer project to his personal computer. Project Dojo is a new supercomputer that Tesla is developing to help train its neural nets, which are primarily used in its self-driving effort.

He was hired as a thermal engineer, though now Tesla claims that he lied about his qualifications, and he was assigned to the Dojo project to work on a cooling system. In this case, first reported by Bloomberg, Yatskov was only recently hired by Tesla back in January.

Sues trade secrets him engineer who series#

It’s the latest in a series of lawsuits that Tesla has filed against former employees who have participated in stealing important information, according to the automaker. Tesla has filed a lawsuit against Alexander Yatskov, a recently hired engineer who Tesla claims stole trade secrets related to its Dojo supercomputer project.