Meta takes legal action against former executive for alleged document theft

Meta Platforms Inc., the parent company of Facebook, has initiated legal proceedings against its former Vice President of Infrastructure, Dipinder Singh Khurana, accusing him of betraying the company's trust by allegedly stealing confidential documents before joining a "stealth" AI cloud computing startup.

According to the lawsuit filed on February 29 in a California state court, Khurana, who had a 12-year tenure at Meta, purportedly breached his contract and engaged in what Meta describes as "brazenly disloyal" conduct.

Meta asserts that Khurana transferred a significant amount of proprietary, confidential, and non-public documents pertaining to Meta's business operations and personnel to his personal Google Drive and Dropbox accounts just prior to his departure from the company.

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The lawsuit further alleges that Khurana's actions led to at least eight employees, mentioned in the pilfered documents, leaving Meta to join Khurana's new venture.

Meta condemns Khurana's conduct, stating it demonstrates a blatant disregard for his contractual and legal obligations.

A Meta spokesperson said that the company is committed to safeguarding confidential business and employee information, indicating that Meta is in all means viewing the misconduct seriously.

This legal action against Khurana echoes a broader trend among major tech corporations to protect their intellectual property rights.

Earlier this month, Google engineer Linwei Ding faced indictment for allegedly stealing over 500 confidential files containing AI trade secrets from the company.

(With inputs from Bloomberg)