Humanoid robot hands: Tesla sues ex-engineer for stealing secrets
A former Tesla engineer is alleged to have stolen trade secrets about robot hands and used them in his own company. Tesla has sued him.
Proception's robotic hand is said to have been created on the basis of Tesla's trade secrets.
(Image: Proception (Screenshot))
Tesla, developer of the humanoid robot Optimus Bot among other things, filed a lawsuit in the federal court in San Francisco on Wednesday against a former engineer who allegedly stole trade secrets for the development of robot hands and then used them in his newly founded company Proception. The robotic hands published by Proception somewhat later were said to bear striking similarities to those of Tesla, which are intended for the Optimus Bot.
According to the court documents (Tesla, Inc. v. Proception, Inc. et al., Docket No. 5:25-cv-04963, Court Docket), the engineer was employed by Tesla from August 2022 to September 2024 to help develop advanced sensors for its robot hands as part of the Optimus program. In doing so, he had access to the most sensitive information, such as technical data, according to Tesla's lawsuit.
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Potential theft of trade secrets
According to Tesla's accusation, the engineer gradually uploaded the secret data to two private cell phones in the weeks before he left Tesla. The engineer then founded his own start-up to develop hands for robots. Five months later, Proception announced that it had successfully built highly developed robotic hands. These bore a strong resemblance to Tesla's designs. Tesla therefore not only sued his ex-engineer, but also filed a lawsuit against his company, Proception.
It is still unclear whether Tesla's accusations are justified. If so, the engineer's behavior was not very clever. Tesla's Optimus team had informed him in August 2024 that access to data in Tesla networks was being monitored and checked for misuse and suspected theft of intellectual property.
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Tesla sees “not only an unlawful misappropriation”, but also a calculated attempt to “exploit Tesla's investments, knowledge, and intellectual property for its own commercial purposes”.
(olb)
