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Battle of the EV Makers: Tesla Takes Rivian to Court For Stealing Trade Secrets

Rivian is playing dirty in a bid to gain an edge on direct competitor Tesla. At least, that’s what Tesla is claiming in a lawsuit filed against Rivian and four individuals who, until recently, worked for Tesla.
Rivian electric pickup will debut by mid-2021 1 photo
Photo: Rivian
In the lawsuit filed in a California Superior Court, San Jose, Tesla claims to have noticed an “alarming pattern” where Rivian is poaching staff from them, with the explicit purpose of stealing trade secrets. The lawsuit, which you can read in full in the PDF below, also names four separate individuals as defendants, all of them former Tesla employees now working for Rivian.

Tesla says it believes two more names will be added to the list and tallies the number of former ex-Tesla staff now working for Rivian at 178. Of these former employees, 70 left directly from Tesla, which means they were poached for the trade secrets they could bring along when they made the transition.

“Misappropriating Tesla’s competitively useful confidential information when leaving Tesla for a new employer is obviously wrong and risky,” the lawsuit reads. “One would engage in that behavior only for an important benefit – to use it to serve the competitive interests of a new employer.”

Tesla also claims to be Rivian’s “number one target from which to acquire information.”  As in, hiring all these people from Tesla was no coincidence.

Contacted for comment by Bloomberg, Rivian Automotive denies the claims in the lawsuit, both regarding the poaching practice and intentional theft of trade secrets. In fact, they say they’re making it a purpose not to introduce “former employers’ intellectual property into Rivian systems.”

“Rivian is made up of high-performing, mission-driven teams, and our business model and technology are based on many years of engineering, design and strategy development,” the statement says. “This requires the contribution and know-how of thousands of employees from across the technology and automotive spaces.”
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About the author: Elena Gorgan
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Elena has been writing for a living since 2006 and, as a journalist, she has put her double major in English and Spanish to good use. She covers automotive and mobility topics like cars and bicycles, and she always knows the shows worth watching on Netflix and friends.
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