BOSTON (Legal Newsline) – A Massachusetts technology company has sued one of its former employees and Facebook for allegedly stealing algorithms for artificial intelligence programs.
The employee, Aleksandar Zlateski, left Neural Magic for a job with Facebook in July 2019, according to the March 4 lawsuit.
“While Facebook is one of the largest users of artificial intelligence in the world — and a potential customer of Neural Magic’s — Neural Magic trusted Zlateski to honor non-disclosure and non-compete agreements he had entered in connection with his work at Neural Magic,” the complaint says. “That trust was misplaced.”
Less than six months after Zlateski left Neural Magic, “Facebook announced that it had published to the world — as open source — a compiler that, investigation would later reveal, includes the same proprietary algorithms that form the heart of Neural Magic’s technology and intellectual property,” the lawsuit alleges.
It seeks an unspecified amount of actual and punitive damages .
U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts case number 1:20-cv-10444