Baidu Inc (NASDAQ:BIDU) has finally decided to sue its former autonomous driving chief and his startup. It has forwarded claims that he stole in-house technology. It has announced that it will do all that it can in offering protection to property it considers crucial to its future growth.
An similar incident took place between Waymo of Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Uber Technologies Inc. It was a case that involved a former executive who got away with valuable data. Many times, whenever such a person wants to jump ship they spend their last moments in the company stealing valuable data with the purpose of utilizing it in the Company they are moving to.
China’s largest search engine company has moved to court to sue JingChi Inc and at the frontline was Wang Jing who is the company’s former executive. The company is looking forward to seeing the Beijing Intellectual Property Court make its determination on the matter.
There are a number of things that it expects the court to accede to. The company wants the court to order the startup to cease using any purportedly stolen technology immediately. Aside from this, it wants $50 million yuan as well as compensation in line with the legal costs involved.
Baidu is currently aiming to become the topmost provider of self-driving cars in China and it has been channeling much effort into that. Coming up with potentially transformative technology to become one of the country’s top companies is something it has its eye fixed on as a real possiblity.
The company’s spokesperson opined, “Baidu’s dubbed its open-source approach “Apollo” and is now trying to enlist car-makers and tech peers to contribute, fending off domestic rivals like Didi Chuxing that’re raising billions of dollars for research.”
Wang has rebutted Baidu’s lawsuit outlining that it was without any grounds. He said that JingChi’s legal team would soon file a response expressing confidence that they wouldn’t lose the case.