Nvidia Sued for Alleged Theft of Trade Secrets Through Video Call Screensharing Error
Automotive technology company Valeo has sued graphics chip giant Nvidia after a video call screen sharing between the two companies showed data “stolen” from Valeo, accusing Nvidia of saving hundreds of millions of dollars in those “stolen trade secrets.”
According to the lawsuit filed against Nvidia, the company’s senior executive Muhammad Moniruzzaman made this mistake while giving a web presentation to a team at his former employer, Valeo.
During the show, Moniruzzaman accidentally showed Valeo a file that showed he had stolen its technical secrets, reports The Verge.
Valeo claimed that Moniruzzaman “downloaded without permission the complete source code of Valeo’s advanced parking and driving assistance systems” in early 2021, as well as “resulting in Valeo Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, PDF files and Excel spreadsheets”.
For three decades, Valeo has helped usher in a new era of automotive technology by developing advanced driver assistance systems.
“The actions of one brazen former employee and the company he left Valeo to join – Nvidia – have undermined and continue to undermine Valeo’s many years of hard work and innovation,” the lawsuit reads.
“By using Valeo’s stolen trade secrets (a former employee has been convicted and sentenced for theft), Nvidia has saved millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars in development costs and generated profits that it did not properly earn and had no right to,” the lawsuit alleges.
“Moniruzzaman’s theft was so brazen that the file path on his screen still read ValeoDocs,” it added.
In this lawsuit, Valeo is seeking, among other remedies, an injunction and damages for Nvidia’s trade secret misappropriation, including Moniruzzaman’s brazen misconduct and illegal advantage he gave Nvidia in developing advanced parking and driver assistance software.
Nvidia did not immediately respond to the lawsuit.
In a letter to Valeo’s lawyers, the law firm representing Nvidia claimed that the company “has no interest in Valeo’s code or its alleged trade secrets and has taken swift, concrete steps to protect your client’s rights.”
