Alphabet’s Car Company Waymo Sues Uber Over Self-Driving Secrets

Alphabet’s rivalry with Uber got even more heated up as the internet giant sued the ride-hailing company for allegedly stealing self-driving cars secrets.
According to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on Thursday, a former Google employee stole the designs and technology and started a new company.
Google’s self-driving car company, Waymo, was ‘apparently inadvertently’ copied on an email from a startup providing components for Uber. There was an attachment showing drawings of Uber’s technology: a lidar circuit board that had ‘a striking resemblance’ to Waymo’s design, according to the complaint.
The complaint accuses Anthony Levandowski, a former key manager for Google self-driving car project, of secretly downloading 14,000 proprietary and confidential files from its hardware systems and later using the information to launch a self-driving truck company called Otto. Uber acquired Otto last August and put Anthony Levandowski in charge of its self-driving project.
It took Waymo seven years to design its laser-scanning system in order to guide its autonomous cars. Uber did the same in nine months. Google’s self-driving car company claims that was possible because the drawings of its 3-D sensors had been stolen.
According to Tyler Ochoa, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, the allegations are very serious and “the trade secret case by itself is a blockbuster.”
The complaint includes such specific information about the design and the dates the information was downloaded that it is hard to believe “they would put those accusations into print unless they had evidence” said Ochoa.