Tesla and Rivian are heading to court over the former claiming the latter stole “trade secrets” through former Tesla employees it hired.
They weren’t able to resolve this out of court; now it looks like it will be heading to trial.
In 2020, Tesla filed a lawsuit against Rivian over allegedly stealing trade secrets by hiring former employees of Tesla and encouraging them to bring documents. Rivian has denied the allegations.
At the time Tesla filed the lawsuit, it wasn’t clear what exact trade secrets Tesla was claiming Rivian had stolen, but we noted that the employees listed in the lawsuits were two recruiters, an EHS manager, and a manager of Tesla’s charging networks.
The automaker claimed that these employees brought “documents consisting of highly sensitive trade secret, confidential, and proprietary engineering information” when they went to work for Rivian.
Top comment by M McBride
"Three years later, the context is interesting since now Tesla and Rivian have since partnered up to help the latter adopt the NACS connector, a standard designed by Tesla."
Since Tesla filed with SAE to make NACS a standard, Rivian won't need Tesla's permission to use the NACS connector. Rivian will be able to buy 3rd-party NACS connectors. If Rivian's agreement with Tesla is the same or similar to Ford's and GM's, then it involves Rivian having access to about 2/3rd of the Tesla Superchargers that are currently active.
I suspect that these companies agreed in principle to buy NACS connectors and adapters for their cars from Tesla, but I really don't know what the terms of the agreements are.
A year later, Tesla expanded the lawsuit claiming more specifically that Rivian is “stealing the core technology for its next-generation batteries.”
Now a new ruling from a judge is allowing the case to move forward after being first initiated three years ago (via Bloomberg):
A state court judge on Wednesday tentatively denied the employees’ request for a summary adjudication ruling — which would have dismissed Tesla’s claim that they had signed agreements and other contracts that forbade them from stealing proprietary information and disclosing it to competitors. The judge granted the employees’ request for a ruling on another claim by Tesla that the workers illegally accessed the company’s computers to copy and steal data.
Once the ruling is official, it should allow Tesla to move forward with its lawsuit against Rivian and the former employees.
Three years later, the context is interesting since now Tesla and Rivian have since partnered up to help the latter adopt the NACS connector, a standard designed by Tesla.
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