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Tesla sues ex-Autopilot director for taking proprietary info, poaching employees
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- DannyBee 10y ago"The suit accuses Anderson of having tried to recruit away employees from Tesla" ... I hope not, since that's not a thing that's illegal. Tesla should certainly know that most non-solicits are not enforceable in california (and i only say most because occasionally, one is found valid, but the vast majority are not)
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoFrom my understanding, a key point in the lawsuit was that he was still working for Tesla when he was recruiting people for his new job.
- kirykl 10y agoThat would be the key. Breach of fiduciary duty
- dsp1234 10y agofrom the complaint[0]: "While still employed by Tesla, and while assuring management of his loyalty, Anderson secretly set out to hire Tesla's Autopilot engineers for his own competing venture" [0] - https://cmportal.scscourt.org/Portal/DocumentViewer/Index/dUuVm96IyH_YZZiskgIn8sIpwBYcPf89GPskFudh7U0MznTZZ6R46YEcYaKjCLv-qLFqplzkkWe4in91pcUEvJSorjDOhEGwMTdUsRjUQk7UI7h-GtaTP2m3ousy7y1S0?p=0 https://cmportal.scscourt.org/Portal/DocumentViewer/Index/dU...
- the_watcher 10y agoAh, there it is. Not made as clear as it could be by TechCrunch. Even in the most generous reading of anti-non-solicitation agreement law would probably uphold a restriction on doing it while employed.
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- kylec 10y agoEven if the lawsuit is without merit, Tesla still wins because future former employees will be more reluctant to try and recruit their former coworkers if they know Tesla will sue them for it.
- cynix 10y agoNot if they know Tesla will lose such lawsuits.
- Operyl 10y agoAt the same time, though, fighting a lawsuit is death to most startups. It'd still have the same consequences, even if Tesla loses here.
- kylec 10y agoIt would be a huge stress and inconvenience if a company sued me, even if I eventually won or the suit was thrown out. I'd have to find a lawyer, deal with the company's lawyers, show up in court, etc. That alone is enough of a deterrent for a lot of people.
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- madebysquares 10y agoUnless he signed a 365 day non-compete which is fairly standard. In which case he would be in breach of contract.
- gozur88 10y agoThose things are pretty much unenforcable in California.
- praneshp 10y agoAre you sure? The non-competes about working for a competitor is un-enforceable, but what about the ones that ban directly approaching former colleagues?
- gozur88 10y agoAs ocdtrekkie pointed out, the key point here is he was soliciting former colleagues while there were still current colleagues. Even California won't protect you there. The one tool companies have at their disposal in CA is the prohibition of using your old company's trade secrets in your new job. Mostly that means you can't take customer lists with you, but you also can't use confidential information to lure away former colleagues. What that means in practice isn't completely clear to me, though it may just be that you can't take the org chart. EDIT: http://www.rhdtlaw.com/job-hopping-california-right/ http://www.rhdtlaw.com/job-hopping-california-right/
- the_watcher 10y agoA non-compete is a different agreement than a non-solicitation agreement. The former is categorically unenforceable in California. The latter is much more of a gray area and dependent on circumstances.
- pfarnsworth 10y agoThat isn't a non-compete. That's a non-solicitation, which is enforceable, at least civilly.
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- JumpCrisscross 10y ago> most non-solicits are not enforceable in California To clarify: "Provisions preventing former employees from competing with their former employers by soliciting their customers (absent use of trade secrets) are...void... The law regarding agreements prohibiting an employee from soliciting employees from former employers, however, is far less clear at this point. ... Provisions that outright bar the hiring of employees are likely to be found unenforceable in many circumstances and should generally be avoided. Where such provisions are used, they should be narrowly tailored, apply only to employees with whom the restrained individual works or becomes aware of during their employment, and/or make any hiring contingent on the payment of fixed sum liquidated damages. Separately, non-solicitation agreements between employer and employee, like the one at issue in Loral, are likely permissible with the caveat that they should be limited in term and scope. The term of such provisions is typically limited to one or two years, and large employers should consider limiting the scope to employees that the individual worked with and/or became aware of during the individual’s employment." Regarding Loral: "The court noted that unlike a no-hire provision, the non-solicitation agreement 'only slightly affects’’ Loral employees, because they were not prevented from seeking employment by contacting [the defendant] – they were only affected insomuch as [the defendant] could not contact them." TL;DR It sounds like Tesla's ex-employee broke his non-solicit by soliciting employees he worked with at Tesla. http://www.jonesday.com/files/Publication/49d21da6-33cb-45ff-8452-7c7ab1bad622/Presentation/PublicationAttachment/713339ae-5178-4bb9-a5c6-82c1b12afb9c/FEB2015%20CLEB.pdf http://www.jonesday.com/files/Publication/49d21da6-33cb-45ff...
- dsp1234 10y agoTL;DR It sounds like Tesla's ex-employee broke his non-solicit by soliciting employees he worked with at Tesla. The complaint is clear. This is about more than non-solicitation, and Anderson was not an ex-employee at the time. From the complaint: "Anderson worked to recruit Tesla's engineers, eventually making offers to at least a dozen people — all in direct violation of his contractual non-solicitation obligations and the duty of loyalty that he owed to Tesla as an employee." This is about breach of duty of loyalty, and interference with contracts. edit: phrasing
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- lbatx 10y ago> I hope not, since that's not a thing that's illegal. It doesn't have to be illegal to be a valid point in a civil suit. Things that are legal can be prohibited by contract. Whether it's illegal or not is irrelevant.
- djrogers 10y agoIt's pretty ballsy to use a company laptop, on company time, at a company office to do work for a competitor (which is essentially what the suit is alleging). My guess is that if he was more circumspect in this - waiting until he quit, working on it after hours on a personal computer, etc - Tesla would not be suing him over this (if the allegations are true). It's rare to see lawsuits over these things if all of the activity is taken after the employee has quit.
- baby 10y agoIf an ex company sues you, of course they will say that you did it on company time, at work, on the company laptop. That you did that or not, it's hard to prove you did not anyway.
- gondo 10y agoisn't the burden of proof on Tesla's shoulder?
- marcosdumay 10y agoYes, and that doesn't stop most lawyers from claiming it. Let's see about Tesla.
- brilliantcode 10y agoNah. > In the suit, Tesla also alleges that Anderson downloaded “hundreds of gigabytes” of proprietary data from his work computer to a personal storage device, and that he then manually hacked the timestamps on files to hide evidence of his acquisition of the information. He also wiped the iPhone issued by Tesla, the suit says, in order to erase evidence of his attempts to poach fellow employees. These attempts were met with only limited success, however, as only two employees apparently ever jumped ship to the new venture. That's ballsy.
- Animats 10y agoTesla is suing Chris Urmson, who never worked for Tesla. He worked for Google. Tesla didn't have any good autonomous vehicle technology. They bought a Mobileye and a radar, hooked them up to get lane-keeping and auto-brake, and hyped that into their so-called "autopilot".
- tinbad 10y agoYes! My previous (A6) and current (S6) Audi's can basically do the same (and could for years!) without all the hype. Whenever I show it to friends they seem to be amazed it's possible and, until then, thought only Tesla was capable of such a feat.
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- temp246810 10y agoAgreed. My subaru forester can do this with just 2 cameras by the rearview mirror. And it was <<30k out the door with 7 year warranty and 3 year maintenance. That's marketing for you I guess. (Don't get me wrong, would get a Tesla if money were no object)
- glitch003 10y agoI have a subaru crosstrek with the eyesight package, and it can't do lanekeeping. Are you sure your forester can? Auto braking and automatic speed adjustment cruise control, but no lanekeeping. It does have an alert when you leave a lane without signaling, but that's not the same as actually keeping you in the lane.
- temp246810 10y ago2017 added lane keep assist. Note everything else featurewise has been available for a while and the outback has had LKA for at least a year. http://media.subaru.com/newsrelease.do?id=940&mid=141&allImage=1&teaser=2017-subaru-forester-offers-advanced-safety-features-greater http://media.subaru.com/newsrelease.do?id=940&mid=141&allIma...
- maverick_iceman 10y agoAny idea who "DOES 1 through 10" are? Investors?
- ridgeguy 10y ago"DOES" are 'John/Jane Does". These are placeholders for potential defendants unnamed at filing of the lawsuit, but who may be added to the named defendant list later.
- maverick_iceman 10y agoI know that, duh. I was wondering if someone has any idea who those potential defendants might be.
- the_watcher 10y agoSo non-solicitation agreements are valid in CA? I know that non-compete's are not (to be clear, as I understand it, this means that Anderson is completely free to start a competitor to Tesla, but it does not in any way allow him to use any resources of Tesla in the formation and operations of said competitor), and had sort of just assumed that non-solicitation agreements fell into the same category. EDIT: other comments have clarified - the crux of the poaching issue in this case is that he was actively soliciting Tesla employees for his competitor while employed by Tesla. That's a far more specific scenario than trying to enforce a non-solicitation agreement after leaving the company.
- pfarnsworth 10y agoNon-solicitations even after leaving the company are enforceable.
- the_watcher 10y agoIt seems that the current state of the law is that they're not categorically unenforceable in the way non-competes are, but that courts have found some limits in their scope. It also seems that there hasn't been a direct challenge to them yet. Either way, the issue in this case is Anderson's behavior while employed, so it doesn't seem like it will come up.
- aurizon 10y agoTesla has a number of patents on this, which they made available on a reciprocal basis. They can easily refuse to allow the startup ANY USE of the patents. The startup can do the same, but may not have much in it's patent portfolio. Whatever it has are likely to be stole Tesla stuff
- blackguardx 10y agoStartups don't typically go out and look to see if they violate any IP. Likewise, forward thinking companies like Tesla don't typically go around suing startups for using their IP. They would rather buy them up if they are doing really interesting things. IP lawsuits only get filed if there is a real threat to the business. Telsa's patent sharing announcement doesn't really amount to much IMHO. It was a press release, not a legal contract.
- abalone 10y agoAny theories on how Tesla would know he manipulated the last-accessed timestamps on documents?
- nacs 10y ago~/.bash_history ?
- wlib 10y agoshred ~/.bash_history; clear; exit
- josephagoss 10y agounset HISTFILE; shred ~/.bash_history; exit You want to unset the current HISTFILE so that it doesn't become apart of ~/.bash_history when you exit.
- nitrogen 10y agoPutting a space in front of commands prevents them from being recorded in the history file.
- josephagoss 10y agoI never knew that! This is awesome, not sure why I never picked up on this before. Thank you.
- thewhitetulip 10y agoI tried doing this, but doesn't work on Mac
- harry8 10y agoAs soon as any company sues someone for 'poaching employees' I don't need to think more about the merits of their case because they clearly have none. The idea that such a claim doesn't just get your case thrown out with extreme prejudice is baffling. It's a market. You don't own your employees and if someone can take them from you you're underpaying them and or treating them less well than you should. Probably both. This restraint of trade bullshit treating employees like goods is just disgusting and totally unacceptable in any civilized society. It goes way beyond what is or isn't "legal"
- zubie7a 10y agoYet we consistently agree to "non solicitation" in our contracts. Even if people came over by their own desire, its hard to prove, and a pissed off company with more resources may be more willing to pursue that on the offensive side than one on the defensive one.
- WalterBright 10y agoAgreeing to non solicitation, and doing it anyway while still employed on company time with company resources, is not an honorable thing to do. If you don't intend to abide by the terms of a contract, then don't agree to it. Nobody is making you work for Tesla. Besides, all contracts can be negotiated. Negotiate for the contract you want.
- harry8 10y agoif you don't agree with the laws and social norms of a country, do all your business elsewhere. Treating such clauses with utter contempt seems morally just fine to me.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoIf you don't agree with the laws and social norms of a country, you're free to break them in protest and suffer the consequences. People nowadays seem to think that civil disobedience should not involve any sacrifices for the disobedient.
- KKKKkkkk1 10y agoElon Musk has said that Apple is "The Tesla Graveyard" because they hired so many of his top engineers away. But I guess that Sterling Anderson's tiny startup is a much more convenient victim to pick on than Apple.
- known 10y agoIllegal and Immoral by Tesla
- ChuckMcM 10y agoOne wonders how much this is thought to be winnable vs as a way to chill others who might be loose in the socket as the saying goes.
- johansch 10y ago> He also wiped the iPhone issued by Tesla, the suit says, in order to erase evidence of his attempts to poach fellow employees. Don't most of us wipe the phones before turning them back to the employer? They tend to have a lot of personal stuff on them - and not really any unique company data.
- loteck 10y agoWouldn't wiping a company phone without permission be akin to destruction of company property? Especially if you did it with the intent to... destroy company property (records of activities you took on company time using a company device)?
- WalterBright 10y agoThe status of your private info on a company issued phone is an excellent topic to discuss with the company HR department when you are issued the phone (and laptop).
- noir_lord 10y agoI just had two phones, work issued and mine, after 6pm the work phone went on 'do not disturb' until 9am next day Ive noticed that work issued phones aren't the perk they appear, its a social pressure of 'we know you have a phone, we gave it to you' combined with the expectation you'll answer. I was a software engineer at that job, I wasn't on call and I was salaried for X hours. I still have two phones noe even though I work for myself, one for work one for home, I did think about dual-sim but I like the separation of concerns.
- WalterBright 10y agoThat works, though I'd really rather not carry two phones around. I'd make an appointment with HR first.
- noir_lord 10y agoFor me its not about checking with HR (and even trusting them) its about the complete seperation of work/life devices, I don't want my employer having access to any of my personal data/metadata and using a work phone as a personal phone does that. As for carrying two phones, I just leave my personal phone in my coat pocket, I don't get a huge volume of calls anyway since people long ago figured out I don't answer them (and I disabled voicemail), if it's urgent text basically.
- mdsfwrz 10y agoI feel like the most interesting part of this is the effort to stop Aurora from using their tech. Anyone know if there is legal precedent to doing that from a civil suit?
- PutinIsEvil 10y agoIf you're working at firm A but have been hired by another firm B and haven't quit A & started B yet does that mean you're forbidden to poach employees so long as you're at A? Is that a law, or a contract firms usually put? Or just some sort of understanding?
- DigitalSea 10y agoThis goes above the regular poaching lawsuits... he downloaded data from Tesla to a external hard drive, returned the laptop but not the drive, tried changing the timestamps and secure erasing his laptop. Here is a link to the lawsuit with all the details of what he did: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3422711/17CV305646.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3422711/17CV30564...