Photographer: Nina Riggio / Bloomberg
Photographer: Nina Riggio / Bloomberg
Before It was ordered to software engineer Tesla Inc. appearing before a judge to counter allegations that he started three days into his work, stealing confidential files and transferring them to a personal storage account.
During his two-week career ending Jan. 6, Alex Khatilov stole more than 6,000 scripts, or files of code, that automate a wide range of business activities, Tesla argues in his secret-theft complaint. .
Tesla assured U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers that the threat is dangerous enough that it issued a restraining order Friday asking Khatilov to retain and return all files, records and emails to the company and appear in front of her, at a distance, on February 4th.
Dealan Elon Musk-car manufacturer has strongly attacked a lawsuit against another former employees and competing companies have been accused of poaching engineers and stealing property data.
Software automation engineer Khatilov was hired as one of “a few Tesla employees” who gained access to the files, which the company says was unrelated to its work. Tesla says he had to sue because Khatilov lied about his theft and tried to erase evidence about him.
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Khatilov said he surprised and shocked Tesla’s lawsuit. He said in an interview, after he was hired on December 28, Tesla sent him a file containing information for new employers. He said he moved it to his personal Dropbox cloud account for later use on his personal computer.
“No one told me to use the banned Dropbox,” Khatilov said. “I don’t know why they say it’s sensitive information, I haven’t had access to any sensitive information. “Companies that want to protect files tend to block their inappropriate installation,” he said.
Days later, Khatilov said he showed Tesla the information in his Dropbox box when asked for security, and deleted the data at the company’s request. A few hours later Tesla called to tell him he had been shot.
According to Tesla, after investigators found thousands of secret files in Khatilov’s personal storage, the engineer said he forgot about them and tried to destroy the data at the beginning of the interview. Tesla says it is not known if he made a copy or sent the files elsewhere. Khatilov said in the interview that he did not send them to anyone or anywhere.
“The scripts are invaluable to Tesla, and would be competitive,” the company said in the lawsuit. “By accessing these scripts, engineers at other companies would bring back Tesla’s engineer processes to create a similar system in a fraction of the time and a fraction of the cost. ”
The New York Post reported the matter earlier.
The case of Tesla v. Khatilov, 21-cv-00528, U.S. District Court for Northern California (San Jose) District.
(Add to Khatilov ‘s answer in the sixth paragraph.)