Baidu claims Wang Jing breached contractual agreements and poached technical staff from the search giant for his early-stage startup JingChi

Chinese language search engine giant Baidu is filing a lawsuit against its former chief of autonomous driving platform, for stealing in-house technology and using it in his own venture, says a Bloomberg report.

Baidu also claims its former employee Wang Jing breached contractual agreements and poached technical staff from the search giant for his early-stage startup JingChi, which is also working in the driverless vehicle industry.

Baidu wants 50 million yuan (US$7.6 million) and legal costs in compensation from Wang Jing and JingChi.

Also Read: This is why autonomous vehicles will live or die on getting driver behaviour right

The case has now entered the judicial process, Baidu said in a statement.

Wang, however, termed the allegations baseless and said his legal team is preparing a response to Baidu.

Of late, Baidu has been accelerating efforts to become China’s leading provider of self-driving cars. In April this year, the firm announced its open autonomous driving platform, Apollo, which provides an all-in-one solution supporting all major features and functions of an autonomous vehicle.

Baidu refers to Apollo as the Android of the autonomous driving industry, but more open and more powerful, allowing partners to go from zero to one and quickly assemble their own autonomous vehicles and start their product R&D. Apollo claims to have attracted over 70 global partners.

Founded in April 2017, JingChi is an autonomous driving startup aiming to achieve large-scale, commercial deployment of fully Level 4 autonomous vehicles in China. JingChi is using deep learning to deliver autonomous vehicles that operate without human intervention by using a combination of LiDAR, cameras, and radar sensors along with artificial intelligence.

In September, JingChi raised US$52 million pre-Series A investment round, led by Qiming Venture, strategic investor NVIDIA GPU Ventures, and a consortium of other investors. 

 

The post Baidu sues former autonomous vehicle platform head for stealing in-house technology appeared first on e27.