Tesla has dropped its suit against Aurora, a rival self-driving car startup founded by Sterling Anderson, the former director of Autopilot at Tesla, and Chris Urmson, who used to be the CTO of Google’s self-driving car project.
Tesla has settled its lawsuit against self-driving startup Aurora
Aurora was founded by Chris Urmson, the former CTO of Google’s self-driving car project, and Sterling Anderson, Tesla’s former director of Autopilot.
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Aurora has agreed to pay Tesla $100,000, according to a Tesla spokesperson.
Tesla filed the suit in January, accusing Anderson of trying to poach engineers and stealing “hundreds of gigabytes” of proprietary information from the company.
In their settlement, Aurora agreed not to recruit any employees or contractors from Tesla until February of next year. Aurora also consented to allow Tesla to run a “forensic audit” conducted by a third-party examiner “in order to determine the absence, presence or use of any Tesla confidential information” stored on devices or accounts owned or controlled by Aurora personnel.
The settlement also states that Tesla may conduct a second audit that must be completed by February of next year, which would also be covered by the $100,000 payment. Those concessions reflect some of what Tesla wanted in its original lawsuit.
The next step, according to sources close to the case, is for Tesla to withdraw the lawsuit from the Santa Clara Court.
Updated: The story includes new information the settlement payment would cover a secondary audit.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
