Tesla is suing Rivian and four former employees for allegedly stealing trade secrets after being hired by the electric truck startup.
Rivian denies the claim.
For the past year, Tesla has been aggressively chasing after startups that are hiring their employees and allegedly bringing inside information with them.
Tesla has an ongoing lawsuit against former employees who now work at Chinese startup Xpeng, who Tesla says has stolen his autopilot source code.
Last year, Tesla claimed that autonomous startup Zoox stole logistics secrets, and later, the autonomous startup now acquired by Amazon settled down and agreed to pay Tesla an undisclosed amount and conduct an internal audit to make sure it is not using any secrets. Tesla commercial.
Now Tesla is suing another startup involved with Amazon, Rivian, over similar claims.
Tesla wrote in a new lawsuit filed this week in a California court:
Rivian is knowingly encouraging the misappropriation of Tesla’s trade secret, confidential and private information by Tesla employees that RiVian hires. About last week, Tesla discovered a disturbing pattern of employees leaving for Rivian, surreptitiously stealing Tesla’s proprietary, confidential and secret business information – information that is especially helpful to the electric vehicle company. And Rivian encourages such thefts even though Rivian is well aware of the confidentiality obligations of Tesla employees. In fact, 13 Rivian recruiters are from Tesla, and they themselves are still subject to Tesla’s confidentiality obligations. ”
In the lawsuit, Tesla also names 4 defendants who used to work at the California-based automaker.
Two of them, Tami Pascale and Kim Wong, were recruiters at Tesla until recently.
The automaker claims they downloaded critical documents on mass recruitment for production and sales, as well as important pay scale documents before leaving:
“Tesla investigators discovered the misappropriation and interviewed Pascale by phone on July 6, 2020. Pascale falsely denied taking Tesla documents. When pressed, she continued her denial, claiming that she had only taken personal documents. Only after investigators confronted her with specific documents that she had taken, Pascale finally confessed to having taken the confidential and proprietary documents. ”
In one case, Tesla claims they can prove that a former Tesla recruiter now at Rivian directed him to obtain specific Tesla documents:
“On July 7, 2020, after his conversation with Duran and the same day that Wong received an update on his background check from Rivian, he sent at least sixteen highly confidential recruitment documents and network trade secrets from Tesla to his Gmail account, including various guides and templates developed by Tesla, the same types of documents that Duran had instructed Rivian to need. “
Tesla even claims that one of the recruiters who went to Rivian kept his Tesla work laptop and refuses to return it.
Another defendant, Jessica Siron, was an EHS manager at Tesla and recently left to join Rivian. She has the EHS director for the startup.
The automaker claims it stole documents related to manufacturing projects:
“These documents consisted of proprietary, confidential and confidential business information on manufacturing project management, manufacturing equipment control specifications, manufacturing robotics specifications, and manufacturing equipment requirements. Siron would rarely use these documents, if at all, as manager of Environmental Health and Safety, but exported them shortly after accepting his offer in Rivian. “
Furthermore, Tesla claims that Siron did not cooperate in trying to remove documents from his personal cloud.
The last defendant is Carrington Bradley.
Electrek reported on Bradley last month in our coverage of how Rivian was hiring employees from the Tesla Supercharger Network to build his own fast charge network:
Rivian Adventure Network: Electric Van Maker Hires Tesla Staff To Build A Charging Network
Tesla wrote in the lawsuit:
“Defendant Carrington Bradley worked at Tesla as Cargo Program Manager until he left for Rivian on March 20, 2020. Mr. Bradley’s role at Rivian is Senior Cargo Development Manager, presumably to build a cargo network for Rivian to mimic Tesla’s Supercharger network. “
The company claims that Bradley used his internal knowledge at Tesla to target critical employees to recruit for the Rivian effort:
“On March 19, 2020, the day before he left Tesla to go to Rivian, Bradley referred to his list of personal email addresses of a select group of highly-educated senior Tesla employees who are experts in deployment and Cargo network management, precisely The type of equipment Rivian needs to deploy his own cargo network. The information would allow Rivian to target to recruit members of that group, which is responsible for the selection, implementation and administration of the network. Tesla Supercharger Global “.
Tesla also plans to add two additional currently unidentified former employees who believe “likely embezzled trade secrets, confidential or proprietary information of Tesla” as defendants at a later date.
After submitting these claims to Rivian’s attorney general, Tesla was not satisfied with the response he received from the startup and started the lawsuit.
Electrek contacted Rivian about the matter, and the company issued the following response denying Tesla’s allegations:
“We admire Tesla for its leadership in restoring expectations of what an electric car can be. Rivian is made up of high-performance teams, driven by mission, and our business and technology model is based on many years of engineering, design and strategy development. This requires the contribution and knowledge of thousands of employees from all technological and automotive spaces. By joining Rivian, we require all employees to confirm that they have not, and will not, enter the IP of former employers into Rivian’s systems. The allegations in this lawsuit are unfounded and run counter to Rivian’s culture, spirit and corporate policies. “
To date, Tesla has counted 178 former employees who were hired by Rivian, of whom approximately 70 joined Rivian directly from Tesla.
Here is Tesla’s lawsuit against Rivian in its entirety:
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