Photo credit: Tesla

Electric car kingpin Tesla has filed a lawsuit against Rivian, the highly-funded electric vehicle upstart backed by the likes of Ford and Cox Automotive, alleging that the company is “knowingly encouraging” misappropriation of its trade secrets by employees it poached from Tesla. Simply recruiting Tesla employees to a rival company would be “legitimate competitive conduct,” Tesla admits in its suit but says it’s seen “an alarming pattern” among those who have recently left its coffers to Join Rivian.

Tesla claims that Rivian instructed one recently departing employee about “the types of Tesla confidential information” that it needs and that it discovered three other employees taking “highly valuable, confidential information as they left for Rivian.” As noted in the suit, more than a dozen current Rivian recruiters are former Tesla employees and “thus familiar with the types of information to which Tesla employees have access.” In response, Rivian, via a spokesperson, has termed Tesla’s claims as “baseless.” “Upon joining Rivian, we require all employees to confirm that they have not, and will not, introduce former employers’ intellectual property into Rivian systems,” the company said.

Tesla isn’t new to suing over alleged theft of trade secrets. The company has had previous battles with the likes of Zoox, Aurora, and Chinese electric car upstart Xpeng over claims of theft of trade secrets usually from former employees.

Tesla filed suit against Rivian just this week. Rivian is notably fresh off $2.5 billion in new funding from a group of investors.