NVIDIA is facing a lawsuit from French automotive giant Valeo after one of its employees made a screen sharing error. According to Valeo’s complaint, Mohammad Moniruzzaman, an engineer at NVIDIA who previously worked for the company, accidentally viewed the source code files on his computer while sharing his screen during a meeting with both companies in 2022. Valeo employees quickly recognized the code and took screenshots before informing Moniruzzaman of his error.
It should be noted that Valeo and NVIDIA are working together on an advanced parking and driving assistance technology that a manufacturer offers to its customers. Valeo was previously responsible for both the software and hardware sides of the manufacturer’s parking assistance technology. However, in 2021, the larger group received the contract to develop its parking assistance software. Valeo wrote in its lawsuit that its former employee, who helped the company develop its parking and driving assistance systems, realized that his prominence and access to its proprietary technologies would make him “extremely valuable” to NVIDIA.
Shortly after this development, Moniruzzaman is said to have used his personal email to provide unauthorized access to Valeo’s systems to steal “tens of thousands of files” and 6GB of source code. He then left Valeo a few months later, taking the stolen information with him when he was given a senior position at NVIDIA, the complaint says. He was also working on the same project he was involved in for Valeo, which is why he was present at this video conference.
Valeo said his former employee admitted to stealing his software and that German police found his documentation and hardware on Moniruzzaman’s walls during a raid on Moniruzzaman’s home. According to Bloomberg, he has already been convicted in a German court of violating trade secrets and was ordered to pay 14,400 euros ($15,750) in September.
In a June 2022 letter, NVIDIA’s lawyers told the plaintiff’s attorney that the company “has no interest in Valeo’s code or its alleged trade secrets and has taken immediate concrete steps to protect them.” [its] However, Valeo sued the company earlier this month, saying that NVIDIA “saved millions, perhaps even hundreds of millions of dollars in development costs and made profits that the company did not properly generate and was not entitled to” through the theft of his trade secrets.
This is just further evidence that competition in the autonomous driving market continues to increase. Back in 2017, Waymo accused Uber of colluding with its former employee Anthony Levandowski to steal over 14,000 confidential and proprietary design files. Levandowski was sentenced to 18 months in prison, but six months later he was pardoned by then-President Donald Trump.