
Tesla sues ex-Autopilot director for taking proprietary info, poaching employees - dwynings
https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/26/tesla-sues-ex-autopilot-director-for-taking-proprietary-info-poaching-employees/
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djrogers
It'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
If 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
isn't the burden of proof on Tesla's shoulder?

~~~
marcosdumay
Yes, and that doesn't stop most lawyers from _claiming_ it. Let's see about
Tesla.

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harry8
As 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"

~~~
johncolanduoni
Really? Legally obligating your employees to not try to hire their coworkers
at a competing business _on company time while using company resources_ is
treating employees like goods? That's a pretty bold statement, though I
suspect you simply "didn't think about the merits of their case".

~~~
alexandercrohde
Does it really matter whether it's on "company resources," in any sense other
than the outmoded legal sense? Or company time? Perhaps for termination, but
it's not against the law to hurt your employer, nor should it be.

Perhaps you may want to refresh your perspective by remembering some of the
times managers have colluded to keep wages down. "Poaching" is such a
ridiculous term for "offering somebody better rewards for their work and them
accepting."

Stealing proprietary information is another story though, let's not make this
whole thing binary.

~~~
johncolanduoni
> Does it really matter whether it's on "company resources," in any sense
> other than the outmoded legal sense? Or company time? Perhaps for
> termination, but it's not against the law to hurt your employer, nor should
> it be.

As was mentioned elsewhere in this thread, even California's Labor Code
contains such a provision:

“An employee who has any business to transact on his own account, similar to
that entrusted to him by his employer, shall always give the preference to the
business of the employer.”

> Perhaps you may want to refresh your perspective by remembering some of the
> times managers have colluded to keep wages down.

How exactly does a senior manager using his position to recruit his
subordinates fight that? In fact, it seems like a great way to put employees
in precisely that position.

~~~
alexandercrohde
> even California's Labor Code contains such a provision

Again "Any sense _other than_ the outmoded legal sense." I hope you aren't
arguing that something not being illegal in California is evidence that the
thing is morally good?

> "Using his position to recruit his subordinates"

What's your implication? That somehow Anderson threatened their careers?
Because I don't see anything suggesting that in the article. And frankly, it's
disingenous to promote that kind of theory with no evidence and a clear
knowledge that such a threat would never fly (I.E. any employee could go to HR
and say "he's firing me because I won't join his company with that google guy"
and they'd get rehired and potentially win a whistle-blower lawsuit).

If you're not implying that some threat was involved, then I have no pity on
the people he so maliciously offered superior jobs to.

~~~
johncolanduoni
I was responding to the later sentence where you asserted that it wasn't
illegal. No, I don't think everything in the California labor code (or any
other for that matter) is in accordance with what is moral.

You can have an unhealthy power dynamic without ever directly threatening
someone's career. Do you generally hold that when an employee is put in an
uncomfortable position by a superior, they can't complain if they could've
just gone to HR and hoped that they would be receptive?

Calling my speculation disingenuous when you tried to use the fact that
managers have colluded to keep employee wages low without any evidence Tesla's
in fact did that is pretty hypocritical.

~~~
alexandercrohde
>>> Do you generally hold that when an employee is put in an uncomfortable
position by a superior, they can't complain if they could've just gone to HR
and hoped that they would be receptive?

What I'm contending is that there is absolutely no evidence any employees were
made uncomfortable by what happened. And moreover since I know I at least
would much rather receive a poach offer than not from my manager, it's hard
for you to make a blanket statement that these anti-poaching rules are somehow
to protect employees.

I'm not suggesting that Tesla colluded to keep wages down. My point is that
many C-level executives and investors see their dynamic with their employees
as antagonistic (i.e. 0-sum-game). Without the opportunity to get bought by
other companies the competitiveness of the market is undermined, and employees
get paid below their value. Preventing poaching does exactly that.

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DannyBee
"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)

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _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...](http://www.jonesday.com/files/Publication/49d21da6-33cb-45ff-8452-7c7ab1bad622/Presentation/PublicationAttachment/713339ae-5178-4bb9-a5c6-82c1b12afb9c/FEB2015%20CLEB.pdf)

~~~
the_watcher
Got it, that's helpful. So basically, you can't prevent a former employee from
hiring your employees, but you can limit the extent to which the former
employee can proactively recruit your employees, so long as the terms of the
agreement are limited and well defined?

~~~
AstralStorm
You cannot prevent a former anyone except in many states of US via non-compete
agreements. (not in california)

Non-soliciting agreement is a separate matter untested in court.

However, he was an employee at the time of soliciting, making it a very
different matter. Directly prohibited by california work code.

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Animats
Tesla 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
Yes! 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.

~~~
temp246810
Agreed. 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)

~~~
vvanders
Having owned an Eye-Sight Subaru and AP Tesla at the same time I can attest
they aren't nearly the same.

For one Eye-Sight turns off if you come to a complete stop and won't re-engage
until you get over a threshold(I believe 18mph). It has a pretty limited HUD
to communicate what the system is seeing.

In comparison the Tesla will do full rush-hour traffic flawlessly and does a
much better job of communicating what it's seeing in the vicinity of the car.
It also bounces the radar under the car ahead of you so it has the ability to
see heavy braking conditions much sooner.

C&D did a pretty good comparison recently[1], it didn't include the A8/S8 but
most of the other competitors but Tesla was far and away the better system.

[1] [http://www.caranddriver.com/features/semi-autonomous-cars-
co...](http://www.caranddriver.com/features/semi-autonomous-cars-compared-
tesla-vs-bmw-mercedes-and-infiniti-feature)

~~~
temp246810
You are mistaken.

Yes the eyesight disengages if you're stopped for more than about 2 seconds
(will acknowledge it's annoying), but you can restart it at the touch of a
button even from a stand still. This might be a recent change.

That car and driver review doesn't fully explain the features.

I'm sure the Tesla is a bit nicer and more autopilotey, but it will cost you
70-80k MORE out the door which is the point. Eyesight gets you 80-90% there.
The tech is otherwise similar features wise.

If anything what you could argue is that the Tesla can get you on the freeway
on its own which is pretty cool. Can it do that?

~~~
vvanders
How many times are you pressing that button in 40 minutes of rush hour
traffic? That to me is where Tesla's AP really shines, 70mph AP is nifty but
not nearly as useful.

I was just commenting since we've owned both systems, if you haven't had a
chance to give Tesla's a spin they are happy to do free test-drives, on paper
they look similar but in execution I found Tesla's to be miles ahead(and
constantly improving).

That extra 60k also gets you some really acceptable 0-60 times :).

~~~
temp246810
It's more than 60k all in when I looked into getting.

You'd be surprised, during most drives home I only have to hit it 2-3 times.

Listen, I'm not trying to argue that my Forester is nicer than your Tesla. By
no means is that the case.

My comment was more to point out that the tech is a lot more common than
people think.

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johansch
> 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.

~~~
WalterBright
The 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
I 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
That works, though I'd really rather not carry two phones around. I'd make an
appointment with HR first.

~~~
noir_lord
For 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.

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DigitalSea
This 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/3422711/17CV30564...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3422711/17CV305646.pdf)

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the_watcher
So 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
Non-solicitations even after leaving the company are enforceable.

~~~
the_watcher
It 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.

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ChuckMcM
One 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.

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abalone
Any theories on how Tesla would know he manipulated the last-accessed
timestamps on documents?

~~~
nacs

      ~/.bash_history ?

~~~
wlib

      shred ~/.bash_history; clear; exit

~~~
josephagoss

       unset 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
Putting a space in front of commands prevents them from being recorded in the
history file.

~~~
josephagoss
I never knew that! This is awesome, not sure why I never picked up on this
before.

Thank you.

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KKKKkkkk1
Elon 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.

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mdsfwrz
I 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?

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maverick_iceman
Any idea who "DOES 1 through 10" are? Investors?

~~~
ridgeguy
"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
I know that, duh. I was wondering if someone has any idea who those potential
defendants might be.

------
known
Illegal and Immoral by Tesla

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aurizon
Tesla 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
Startups 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.

