Tesla settled a lawsuit against an ex-engineer who copied the source code of its Autopilot driver-assistance tech before taking a job with a Chinese competitor, according to documents filed Thursday with a US district court Reuters has reported.
Former Tesla employee Guangzhi Cao will pay the electric vehicle maker an undisclosed sum as part of the settlement, though he maintains he never did anything improper with the Autopilot code.
In its original filing, Tesla said that its Autopilot feature was the “crown jewel of Tesla’s intellectual property portfolio.” The company recently released its Full Self-Driving update, offering new features like automatic lane-changing, auto-parking, summon and more. An NTSB board recently said in a series of tweets that the Full Self-Driving name was “deceptive,” as it’s “not true… that the vehicle can drive itself right now.”
