Well, self-driving technology sure is inducing many employees to take up arms against their parent companies — if creating a company with the potential to rival the patent could be called taking up arms that is. Tesla appears to have settled a lawsuit it filed against Sterling Anderson, a former employee and a past director of the Autopilot program. Apparently, the lawsuit involves a settlement that clears Aurora and Anderson of any wrongdoing.
However, this clearance comes at a price and Aurora will be paying Tesla a one time fee of $100,000. What’s more, the company has agreed not to hire anyone away from Tesla. This includes both full-time employees or contractors, and comes in response to allegations that Aurora was poaching employees away from Tesla. This clause will last until at least next February.
Anderson is a former Tesla employee and he was also a key leader of Tesla’s semi-automated highway driving features. However, he later left the company and teamed up with former Google self-driving car project CTO Chris Urmson, to find Aurora. In a situation strangely reminiscent of what has been happening with Waymo and Uber, Tesla filed a lawsuit against Aurora, blaming it of all the usual things — poaching employees, tech rightss and so on.
The companies have also agreed to let a third party perform audits on Tesla’s behalf so as to confirm that no information right belonging to Tesla is found to be in possession of Aurora or its employees.
In a blog post, Anderson said:
We started Aurora to accelerate the industry. Frivolous lawsuits only slow it down. Today, less than three months after filing (and before we were permitted to file a response) Tesla has withdrawn their claims, without damages, without attorney’s fees, and without any finding of wrongdoing. We have even agreed to reimburse the cost of a future audit to demonstrate the integrity of Aurora’s intellectual property.
He also said that the company remained committed to its goal of propagating self-driving vehicles to the masses.
The Tech Portal is published by Blue Box Media Private Limited. Our investors have no influence over our reporting. Read our full Ownership and Funding Disclosure →
