Defamation, Theft of Secrets, Injunction, Settlement: Dispute Between WeRide’s Founding Team Temporarily Resolved
Today, a long-standing dispute in the field of autonomous driving has been settled. The dispute, in which the well-known figure Wang Jin was involved, was based on issues such as the competition rules and trade secrets of the upstream and downstream companies, and multiple parties filed separate appeals. This is not the first time that Wang Jin has encountered such an incident.
The dispute involving two autonomous driving companies and the "first person in autonomous driving" finally came to an end a few days ago after lasting for 18 months.
WeRide and IDT both issued statements today, saying that WeRide, IDT and Wang Jin have reached a settlement, and each has withdrawn all lawsuits against the other company and individuals, and will no longer respond to past lawsuits and related content.
This major dispute in the autonomous driving industry over trade secrets and non-competition rules has finally come to an end.
2017 Jingchi was founded and was "hunted down" by Baidu
Wang Jin is a well-known figure in the field of autonomous driving and a key figure in this incident. The cause of everything can be traced back to his time at Baidu.
In December 2015, Wang Jin co-founded Baidu's autonomous driving division and was known as the "No. 1 in autonomous driving" in China.
His slogan "three years for commercial use, five years for mass production, and ten years for changing the way of travel" is also talked about by people inside and outside the industry.
But turning points always come unexpectedly.
Two years later, Wang Jin resigned from Baidu due to differences in ideas and set up his own company, Jingchi Technology, in Silicon Valley.
JingChi Technology has developed rapidly: it was founded in April 2017, completed closed-road driverless testing in May, obtained a road test license in California in June, completed its first open road test, and completed a test commute during rush hour in Silicon Valley in September.
On the other hand, Jingchi received $30 million in angel round funding when it was first established, and received $52 million in Pre-A round funding in September. Wang Jin also proudly compared Jingchi's technology with Google's Waymo, and its momentum also surpassed that of his former employer Baidu.
This made Baidu unhappy.
In December 2017, Baidu filed a lawsuit against Wang Jin for "infringement of trade secrets", demanding that he stop the infringement and pay 50 million yuan in compensation. This is known as the "first autonomous driving case" in China.
In the lawsuit filed by Baidu, Wang Jin was accused of planning a new company before leaving the company, violating the non-competition obligation, poaching a number of Baidu employees, and not returning printers, computers and other items, resulting in leaks.
There are many bigwigs who have left Baidu to start their own businesses, but Wang Jin is the first one to be sued by Baidu, which shows that Baidu takes this matter very seriously. Wang Jin later denied the lawsuit and brought Jingchi back to Guangzhou to settle down in China.
In February 2018, after encountering negative news, Wang Jin, who was serving as CEO of Jingchi, suddenly resigned, allegedly because he was abandoned by the board of directors, but retained his shares in the company.
What is even more dramatic is that not long after that, Jingchi Technology joined Baidu, joined the Baidu Apollo open platform, and became a partner.
2018 China Intelligent Travel was founded ➡️ and was "hunted down" by WeRide
Perhaps Wang Jin himself did not expect that this experience of being "hunted down" by Baidu would happen again in the future.
After leaving Jingchi, Wang Jin remained silent for a while, but was soon reported to have returned to the autonomous driving industry and founded a company with the Chinese character "Zhong" in its name.
In June 2018, the autonomous driving company Zhongzhixing surfaced. Wang Jin first hid in the second line and then appeared as the company's CEO.
This new company has directly entered into L4 level research in autonomous driving, and recently announced the completion of an angel round of financing of hundreds of millions of yuan.
In October 2018, after experiencing senior personnel changes, Jingchi Technology completed its Series A financing and changed its name to WeRide, but it did not "let go" of Wang Jin.
In November 2018, WeRide filed a lawsuit against AI Driving, Wang Jin and Huang Kun in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, claiming that the three had stolen WeRide's trade secrets in autonomous driving technology and demanded compensation of US$249 million.
In January 2019, WeRide filed the same lawsuit in the Guangdong Higher People's Court, demanding that the defendant stop the infringement and pay 100 million yuan in compensation.
WeRide pointed out that when Huang Kun was developing driverless cars at CIRI, he used the code of his former employer WeRide and poached some employees.
Wang Jin was involved because after leaving the company, he failed to comply with the signed agreement and slandered WeRide, causing its financing to be blocked.
In January 2019, the California District Court issued a temporary injunction requiring CIRI to hand over relevant codes and materials and identify the persons who obtained the trade secrets.
At this point, Zhongzhixing and Wang Jin could no longer sit still and launched counterattacks.
In December 2019, CIRI filed a counterclaim against WeRide in China, demanding a comparison of relevant source codes to prove that it had not infringed on any trade secrets, and also accused WeRide of defamation.
In January 2020, Wang Jin filed a lawsuit against WeRide in the Cayman Court in his personal name, claiming that his shareholder rights had been infringed and demanded that his former company WeRide be liquidated.
He pointed out that when he was forced to leave the company in February 2018, he still held 39% shares, but was eventually diluted to 3%.
Just when things seemed to be turning into a Rashomon and getting out of control, three months later, they suddenly came to an end.
On May 11, 2020, each party issued a statement to resolve their grievances and reach a settlement, withdraw the lawsuit and no longer pursue the previous litigation.
Disputes recur, and so do settlements.
In the five years since leaving Baidu, the two companies Wang Jin worked for have continued to receive legal action. What happened later seemed like a recurrence of similar situations when he left Baidu.
Baidu's lawsuit against Wang Jin was settled only a few months ago.
In February 2020, Zhixing issued a statement saying that according to the civil ruling issued by the Beijing Intellectual Property Court, Baidu has withdrawn the lawsuit against Zhixing's current CEO, Wang Jin, for infringement of trade secrets.
Wang Jin’s Weibo post still remains on that day, with the words: The clear will remain clear and the turbid will remain turbid, never forget your original intention.
