Video call screensharing error gets Nvidia sued over ‘stolen trade secrets’

Automotive technology company Valeo has sued graphics chip giant Nvidia after a video call screen-sharing between the two companies showed ‘stolen’ data from Valeo, accusing Nvidia of having saved hundreds of millions of dollars from those “stolen trade secrets”.

According to a lawsuit filed against Nvidia, the company’s senior staff member Mohammad Moniruzzaman made this error while giving an online presentation to a team from his former employer Valeo.

During the course of the presentation, Moniruzzaman accidentally displayed a file from Valeo, proving he stole its tech secrets, reports The Verge.

Valeo alleged that Moniruzzaman “downloaded without authorisation the entirety of Valeo’s advanced parking and driving assistance systems source code” in early 2021, along with “scores of Valeo Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, PDF files, and Excel spreadsheets.

For three decades, Valeo has helped usher in a new era of automotive technology through innovation in advanced driving assistance systems.

“The actions of one brazen former employee and the company he left Valeo to join — Nvidia — have undermined, and threaten to further undermine the many years of Valeo’s hard work and innovation,” read the lawsuit.

“By using Valeo’s stolen trade secrets (the former employee has been criminally convicted and a penalty order has issued for his theft), Nvidia has saved millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, of dollars in development costs, and generated profits that it did not properly earn and to which it was not entitled,” the lawsuit alleged.

“So brazen was Moniruzzaman’s theft that the file path on his screen still read ValeoDocs,” it added.

In this lawsuit, Valeo seeks, among other remedies, injunctive relief and recovery of damages for Nvidia’s trade secret misappropriation, including Moniruzzaman’s brazen misconduct and the illegitimate advantage he has given Nvidia in its development of advanced parking and driving assistance software.

Nvidia did not immediately respond to the lawsuit.

In a letter sent to Valeo’s attorneys, a law firm representing Nvidia claimed the company “has no interest in Valeo’s code or its alleged trade secrets and has taken prompt concrete steps to protect your client’s asserted rights”.