Tesla Claims Engineer Stole Secrets Just Days Into the Job
- Alex Khatilov denies the theft, says he’s shocked by lawsuit
- Company wins a court order blocking transfer of information
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 had to sue because Khatilov lied about his theft and tried to delete evidence of it.