NVIDIA sued after video call mistake showed ‘stolen’ data firms worked on a joint project, which led to the Microsoft Teams meeting in March 2022.

A lawsuit filed against tech giant NVIDIA alleges that senior employee Mohammad Moniruzzaman made this mistake.

An online presentation was being given to a team from his former employer, Valeo, a car technology company.

As a result, Valeo claims he accidentally displayed a file proving that he stole its technology secrets.

Valeo claims he took NVIDIA’s parking and driving assistance software source code, an area NVIDIA has been trying to expand.

In an effort to prove the brazen nature of Moniruzzaman’s theft, the complaint alleges that the file path on his screen still read ValeoDocs – suggesting a folder containing documents taken from Valeo.

When Mr Moniruzzaman worked for the German arm of Valeo, Valeo claims he stole gigabytes of data in 2021. He left to join NVIDIA later that year.

NVIDIA’s lawyers stated in a letter submitted with the lawsuit that the company was unaware of the data being held by Mr Moniruzzaman.

Mr Moniruzzaman, unwittingly revealing the data to Microsoft Teams in March 2022, was working on a joint project between the firms.

The company claims that Mr Moniruzzaman gave a slide presentation and then minimized the app he was using, but crucially, he was still sharing his screen, leaving visible the file containing the source code behind its proprietary software.

Valeo participants on the videoconference call recognized the source code and took a screenshot of it before Mr Moniruzzaman realized his mistake, according to the lawsuit. “By then, it was too late to cover his tracks.”

As a result, Mr Moniruzzaman was convicted in September 2023 by German authorities for unlawfully holding data.