Credit: Elon Musk | X
Tesla has just sued one of its former engineers for stealing trade secrets about Optimus, its humanoid robotics program. Needless to say, the former employee allegedly exploited everything to launch a rival startup.
The lawsuit was filed Wednesday, Bloomberg reports. The documents state that Zhongjie “Jay” Li - that's the defendant's name - worked on “advanced robotic hand sensors and was entrusted with some of the program's most sensitive technical data” before leaving Tesla and launching his own startup - Proception - within a week. Within five months, then, Proception had “unforeseen” success, claiming to have “successfully built” advanced humanoid robotic hands. Hands that would strikingly resemble those already designed by Tesla, which Li himself was working on.
The engineer would also be nailed down by some research done by the computer at his old workplace. During his last months, in fact, Li would inquire about “humanoid robotic hands,” “venture capital,” and other sources of funding for startups. But that's not all, because also during that time he allegedly downloaded Optimus-related files on two personal smartphones.
“Li's conduct is not only misappropriation for illicit commercial purposes, but also constitutes a calculated attempt to exploit Tesla's investments, insights and intellectual property for his own commercial gain,” the lawyers say in the complaint, now before a federal court in San Francisco.
We all know how much robotics companies are investing to build robotic limbs as efficient as our own. This, to date, represents one of the biggest challenges in the industry, and in this light Tesla's complaint seems justified.
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