dang pay wall.
Archive link: web.archive.org/…/nvidia-lawsuit-corporate-espion…
Ooofh that's pretty damning. 😂
Thanks for copying that in, dang pay wall.
TWeaK@lemm.ee 7 months ago
FoundTheVegan@kbin.social 7 months ago
♥ 💕 ♥
verity_kindle@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Thank you
Pons_Aelius@kbin.social 7 months ago
dang pay wall.
...
Nvidia sued after senior employee accidentally showed off confidential files taken from previous employer during a video meeting
Chloe Taylor
7–9 minutesNvidia is in hot water after one of its software engineers accidentally let a rival company—and his former employer—in on a secret: that he stole its top-secret research and took it to the trillion-dollar tech giant.
During a video call with automotive tech firm Valeo last year, the engineer, Mohammad Moniruzzaman, made a blunder when he shared his screen and showed his ex-colleagues some source code that they immediately recognized as their own.
That’s according to a lawsuit Paris-based Valeo filed against Nvidia earlier this month, in which the former accused the latter of profiting from its trade secrets.
Valeo said that in early 2021—shortly after a major autos equipment manufacturer announced it would move some of its contracts from Valeo to Nvidia—one of its software engineers, Mohammad Moniruzzaman, downloaded the entirety of its advanced parking and driving assistance systems source code.
This was done without authorization, and in breach of the IT code employees are privy to, Valeo said.
“[Moniruzzaman] realized that his knowledge of, and exposure and access to, Valeo proprietary software, technologies, and development techniques would make him exceedingly valuable to Nvidia,” the firm said in the lawsuit.
“Moniruzzaman granted unauthorized access of Valeo’s systems to his own personal email account. He then stole tens of thousands of files and 6 gigabytes of source code, after which, [he] attempted to cover his tracks by subsequently removing his personal account from authorized access.”
Moniruzzaman joined Nvidia in the summer of 2021 after around six years at Valeo.
The lawsuit alleged that he took “scores of Valeo Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, PDF files, and Excel spreadsheets… to facilitate his understanding of the stolen code, the operation of Valeo’s ultrasonic sensors, and the data obtained and transmitted by those sensors” with him to Nvidia—where he was soon promoted to a senior position, and worked on a project for the manufacturer that had partially moved some of its software development contracts from Valeo to Nvidia.
However, it took six months for Valeo the realize something was amiss—and the company said it was clued in thanks to a simple error made on a video call.
Screensharing blunder
TWeaK@lemm.ee 7 months ago
It’s damning for the guy, who has already been convicted, but not necessarily for NVidia. Valeo have provided no evidence of NVidia using their code, nor even mention of any specific NVidia product it might have been used in.
MNByChoice@midwest.social 7 months ago
Valeo and Nvidia competed on a contract. Valeo won the hardware part, Nvidia the software part. The lawsuit is about Nvidia benefiting on this project.
Details from another place the same story, but from The Verge. lemmy.nz/post/3702572
TWeaK@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Direct link to the article: theverge.com/…/valeo-nvidia-autonomous-driving-so…
TL;DR NVidia and Valeo competed for an AI contract, Valeo won the hardware side but NVidia won the software (surely that’s backwards lol). The two companies had to work together on the project, it was during such a project call that Moniruzzaman was caught with old Valeo code.
So yeah, that’s much more damning, and the Fortune article did a poor job with the story by not explaining that.
Dangdoggo@kbin.social 7 months ago
Ah, there's the rub. Thanks I was having a hard time figuring this one out.
ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world 7 months ago
That’s exactly the take-away I got from the whole thing. One idiot copy-pasted stuff and used it in front of the people he copied it from.
Valeo will have a hard time proving its use, without a third party doing some searching in a lot of source code. One person with access to all of both sides’ code in order to compare them? that seems like a big ask for a fishing expedition.
TWeaK@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Well it looks like they probably did use it though. The one guy had the code on his NVidia work laptop, and NVidia won an AI software contract over Valeo. It was in a collaborative call with Valeo (who won the hardware portion of the contract) that the code was revealed. NVidia may well be ordered to hand over their code for examination, to prove that Valeo’s code isn’t present in there. If Valeo get the injunction, NVidia will have to cease using that code and rewrite it entirely.