Baidu sues its former vice president for infringement of commercial secrets

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- A local media reported today that Baidu has appealed to Beijing Intellectual Property Court to prosecutes Wang Jin, former senior vice president and general manager of Baidu autopilot department, and his company Jingchi for infringement of commercial secrets.

It’s learned that Baidu requests a court order that the defendant ceases violating Baidu’s commercial secrets including using the commercial secrets to engage in autopilot and related businesses, which compete with Baidu’s business. Baidu also requests a court order that defendant should compensate for economic losses with a total of RMB 50 million, as well as making a public statement to eliminate effects and burdening all court fees. Beijing Intellectual Property Court has accepted the case.

Baidu also mentions in prosecution that Wang Jin planned to establish Janzsoft even before his resignation from Baidu and the new company has always been engaging in domestic businesses to compete directly with Baidu in autopilot area.

Data shows that Wang Jin, joining in Baidu in April, 2010, once took positions of Baidu Senior Vice President, Baidu Technical Strategic Committee Chairman, and General Manager of Baidu Autopilot Department. He established Baidu Mobile Cloud Department, Baidu Big Data Department, Baidu Infrastructure Department, Baidu Autopilot Department, Baidu USA R&D Center and Baidu Shenzhen R&D Center. He also co-established Baidu Institute on the basis of Baidu Deep Learning Laboratory to focus on artificial intelligence developments. During his term between April, 2010 and April, 2015, he was also responsible for the commercialization-oriented technologies and products, which made Baidu revenues rising 10 times in five years.

Besides, Wang Jin leads and makes Baidu big data engine, big data and open platforms, Baidu Cloud, Baidu open cloud and Baidu brain to actively promote the developments in voice recognition and image recognition. He also made layouts in high-performance heterogeneous computing platform based on ARM CPU, GPU, and FPGA in advance. He also actively pushed forward the developments and application of autopilot technologies. Baidu autopilot vehicles successfully completed road test in December, 2015.