A former Valeo employee poached by NVIDIA, which was the subject of a search in France, made a huge blunder during a video meeting between the two companies. By sharing his screen, he inadvertently revealed confidential data that he apparently stole before leaving the French automotive supplier.
A careless mistake, the stupidest one, will undoubtedly cost its author dearly, and perhaps even his employer. Valeo sues NVIDIA in the United States for theft of trade secrets. According to the complaint, Mohammad Moniruzzaman, former employee of Valeo Schalter und Sensoren (German subsidiary of the French automotive supplier), stole the source code of parking and driving assistance software before joining NVIDIA in 2021. Remember that the founder has diversified into the market for software, cloud and hardware infrastructures for autonomous vehicles.
Valeo explains that it discovered this theft the following year thanks to the masterful blunder committed by its author who betrayed himself. This happened during a Teams video meeting (which now has an AI worthy of Valérie Damidot) between a team from NVIDIA, in which Mohammad Moniruzzaman and engineers from Valeo participated. The two companies were collaborating on a parking assist project for a third-party manufacturer. NVIDIA intervened on the software part while Valeo had to provide the appropriate hardware.
More than 6 GB of data stolen
During this video meeting on March 8, 2022, Mohammad Moniruzzaman shared a PowerPoint presentation with his former colleagues at Valeo. The usual routine… But once the presentation was over, the clumsy guy forgot to deactivate his computer’s screen sharing. The participants then discovered the presence of a source code file entitled “ValeoDocs”. Valeo employees had the reflex to take a screenshot.
The equipment manufacturer launched an internal investigation which discovered that the former employee-spy had left with 27,000 files and more than 6 GB of source code. German police searched Mohammad Moniruzzaman’s home and discovered more data belonging to NVIDIA. The person concerned admitted the facts and was sentenced across the Rhine to a fine of 14,400 euros.
NVIDIA assures that it has no use for this data
NVIDIA claims to have removed the code additions made by humans, while asserting that the company has no interest in exploiting this data anyway. Valeo doesn’t see it that way and considers that this data allowed NVIDIA to save time and hundreds of millions of dollars in development costs. The plaintiff is seeking damages and an injunction prohibiting NVIDIA from using the stolen data.
A trial date has not yet been set, but it is possible that the two parties will reach an amicable agreement before then. This unfortunate story is reminiscent of that of Samsung, which had an almost similar experience with an employee who allegedly photographed documents containing confidential information on the chip manufacturing processes.
Source : Bloomberg, The Register
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