Tesla Says Engineer Stole Code Worth 200 Years Of Work Automating Entire Process Of The Company
Tesla claims a software engineer by the name of Alex Khatilov stole critical automated software. The scripts took Tesla 12 years and 200 man-years to develop.
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Tesla has filed a lawsuit with United States District Court for Northern California alleging Alex Khatilov, a systems engineer hired by Tesla has stolen proprietary automation software the entire organization operates by.
The suit comes after Tesla’s information security personnel learned Mr. Khatilov improperly transferred 26,000 scrips Tesla uses to automate its operations. The allegedly stolen data contains a number of Tesla’s automation processes by which the entire manufacturing process from ordering parts to delivering vehicles runs on.
The recent case of
Multimedia Sales & Marketing, Inc. v. Marzullo, et al., N.E.3d -, 2020 IL App (1st) 191790 (1st Dist. Dec. 21, 2020), demonstrates the peril that attorney fees sanctions present for litigants who bring trade secret misappropriation claims in bad faith.
Like the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act, the Illinois Trade Secrets Act (“ITSA”) allows litigants to recover attorneys’ fees incurred in defending “bad faith” misappropriation claims.
See18 U.S.C. § 1836(b)(3)(D); 765 ILCS 1065/5. Illinois courts interpret claims of bad faith in conjunction with Illinois Supreme Court Rule 137 an analogue to Federal Rule 11 that obligates Illinois attorneys to only bring actions that are well-grounded in fact, warranted by existing law (or a good-faith argument for the extension, modification, or reversal of existing law), and not for an improper purpose. Section 5 of ITSA complements Rule 137’s obligations and provides a mechanism for courts to penalize
Landus Cooperative of Ames has filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of the United States District Court, naming NEW Cooperative and two of their employees in 13 counts. Documents filed with the court ask for a temporary restraining order, actual, punitive and exemplary damages along with attorney fees and interest. Jeffrey Ryan Headley and Brian David Berns were former Landus employees who are accused of the theft and misappropriation of confidential information considered “trade secrets” and then of attempting to cover up this theft by destroying evidence. The suit also states that since the defendants were employed by NEW Cooperative at that time, the cooperative is liable for their actions. The filing says Headley and Berns were field sales agronomists, Berns through the Churdan and Farnhamville Landus locations and Headley through Paton and Somers. Both had access to pricing, inventory and strategy information. When Berns’ employment at Landus was terminated in early De
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With the dramatic increase in trade secret cases since the 2016 passage of the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA), and the large damages awards in many of these cases, it is now more crucial than ever to properly understand how to assess and calculate damages in trade secret cases. Trade secrets can mean big business for companies that hold them, and damages awards for trade secret misappropriation can reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars. For example, a jury in a recent New York trade secret misappropriation case awarded the plaintiffs an $855 million verdict.[i] In a recent webinar, Fish attorneys Esha Bandyopadhyay and Tommy Jacks discussed the current landscape of trade secret damages, both under the DTSA and various state laws, as well as some recent developments in trade secrets damages law. Below is a summary of those developments. For more information about trade secrets damages, please find a recording of t
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The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a dismissal of trade secret claims, finding that although misappropriation of a trade secret prior to the enactment of the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) does not preclude a claim arising from post-enactment or continued use of the same trade secret, the publication of a trade secret in a patent application extinguishes trade secret status.
Eli Attia; Eli Attia Architect PC v. Google LLC, et al., Case No. 19-15771 (9th Cir. Dec. 16, 2020) (Wallace, J.)
Eli Attia is an architect who developed a system and method for automated design, fabrication and construction, called Engineered Architecture (EA). In 2010, Attia entered into a partnership with Google. Attia disclosed his trade secrets related to the technology to Google so that they could work together to develop a program that would implement EA. Attia executed patent assignments with Google, and a year later Goo