Nvidia: Nvidia sued for stealing trade secrets of this French automotive firm

French automotive company Valeo has filed a lawsuit against US-based chip giant Nvidia. The chipmaker is facing a lawsuit after one of its employees committed a ‘blunder’ while sharing his screen during a video conference. According to the lawsuit (seen by Engadget), Mohammad Moniruzzaman who is currently an engineer for NVIDIA and was formerly employed at Valeohas caused the ‘issue’.During a meeting with both firms in 2022,Moniruzzaman mistakenly showed Valeo’s source code files on his computer as he was sharing his screen. Other employees of the company were quickly able to recognise the code and took screenshots before Moniruzzaman was notified of his mistake.
Nvidia and Valeo were working together
Valeo and NVIDIA are working together on an advanced parking and driving assistance technology which a car manufacturer wants to offer its customers. Earlier, Valeo used to be in charge of both the software and hardware parts of the manufacturer’s parking assistance tech.
However, in 2021, Nvidia won the contract to develop its parking assistance software. In its lawsuit, Valeo wrote that its former employee helped the company to develop the parking and driving assistance systems. The company believes that Moniruzzaman’s exposure and access to its proprietary technologies would make him “exceedingly valuable” to Nvidia.

Valeo alleged that Moniruzzaman gave Nvidia his email as well as unauthorised access to the company’s systems to steal “tens of thousands of files”. The company even accused that 6GB of Valeo’s source code were also accessed by him after the screensharing incident.
A few months later, Moniruzzaman left Valeo and took the stolen information with him when he was given a senior position at Nvidia, the complaint states. Valeo also notes that he worked on the very same project he was involved in for the company. This was the reason for Moniruzzaman to be present at that video conference.
Valeo claimed that its former employee had already admitted to stealing its software. The company also mentioned that German police found its documentation and hardware pinned on Moniruzzaman’s walls when his home was raided.
According to a report by Bloomberg, Moniruzzaman was already convicted of infringing business secrets in a German court that ordered him to pay €14,400 ($15,750) in September.
What Nvidia has to say
In a letter to the plaintiff’s counsel in June 2022, Nvidia’s lawyers wrote that the company “has no interest in Valeo’s code or its alleged trade secrets and has taken prompt concrete steps to protect [its] client’s asserted rights.”
That didn’t stop Valeo from suing the chipmaker earlier this month. The French automotive company also said that Nvidia has “saved millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, of dollars in development costs, and generated profits that it did not properly earn and to which it was not entitled” for stealing its trade secrets.