An Nvidia engineer accidentally showed files stolen from the French automaker Valeo during a video conference with representatives of the same company. This led to a lawsuit by Valeo against Nvidia.
Mohammad Moniruzzaman, an Nvidia engineer, cut the presentation short and accidentally shared his screen during a video conference with Valeo representatives. The files of the French company were previously stolen on the screen. Valeo representatives immediately noticed the stolen intellectual property and filed a lawsuit in Germany. The engineer previously worked for Valeo. The investigation revealed that while working for the company, Moniruzzaman stole tens of thousands of source code files, sending them to his personal email. The court found the engineer guilty and ordered him to pay a fine of €14,400. Later, Nvidia learned about the situation and tried to settle it, but Valeo, along with the rest, filed a lawsuit against Nvidia in a California court.
Why is this important?
According to The Verge, Nvidia has spent most of the last decade trying to enter the automotive market. According to Valeo, Mohammad Moniruzzaman “downloaded without authorization the entire source code of Valeo's advanced parking and driver assistance systems” in early 2021, along with “dozens of Valeo Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, PDFs and Excel spreadsheets explaining various aspects of the technology before leaving to join Nvidia in August of that year.
Nvidia's lawyers say the company has no interest in Valeo's code and has taken quick concrete steps to protect the French automaker's claimed rights. Moniruzzaman assured that the stolen files were not distributed to other employees and were stored purely on his personal laptop.
Theft of intellectual property is rarely so egregious, but allegations of such offenses keep cropping up in the global race to dominate the self-driving car market, which is projected to grow to $400 billion by 2035, according to Bloomberg.
Over 10 years, Nvidia's capitalization has grown by 11,170%, from $8.4 billion in 2013 to over $1 trillion in 2023. According to CNBC, no other company's stock has risen so fast.