Uber Officials: We Didn't Steal Any Technology From Waymo

Levandowski is now the head of the self-driving cars division at Uber, and his departure from Google is fuelling a corporate lawsuit against the San Francisco-based company.

The worldwide transportation network Uber has stated that they did not steal any technology from Waymo, a parent company of Google. Waymo specialises in car developing systems and is accusing Google of using their driverless car technologies obtained from an ex-Google employee Antony Levandowski, whom is now working at Uber.

According to official declarations from Uber, the company started to develop its driverless car mechanisms before Antony Levandowski joined the company.

Waymo's allegation and Uber's response

Waymo claims Levandowski and Uber stole the element which is called Lidar. Lidar is a component used for light detection and ranging sensor procedures, which helps a driverless vehicle to navigate efficiently. However, Uber has stated that its Lidar is considerably different from Waymo Lidar since Uber's is composed of four distinct light detection lenses and the alleged "stolen" one only contains one lens.

Following the motion filed by Waymo requesting the complete halt of Uber's work on driverless car technologies through an injunction, Waymo has argued that Levandowski collaborated with Uber while still working as an employee at Google allowing him to allegedly "steal" over 14,000 files that belonged to Waymo.

Mr. Levandowski publicly started a self-driving truck company called Otto, and Waymo states that he only was able to do that using the stolen files. Otto was sold to Uber last August for almost $700 million.

Uber also stated that there was not a justification for the injunction since there was no urgency from Waymo at the moment of filing the motion. Allegedly, Waymo found out about the stolen files in October but did not file any lawsuit until March.

"Waymo's injunction motion is a misfire," Angela Padilla, Uber's associate general counsel, said in a statement. "If Waymo genuinely thought that Uber was using its secrets, it would not have waited more than five months to seek an injunction. Waymo doesn't meet the high bar for an injunction, which would stifle our independent innovation "” probably Waymo's goal in the first place."

The initial lawsuit against Uber was based on Waymo claiming similarities in both Lidar designs and the documents that Levandowski allegedly stole contained the Waymo's design. Uber later argued that this was unsupported since both designs were different and did not had "a striking resemblance."

Judge William Alsup in United States District Court in San Francisco stated earlier this week that given the fact that neither Uber nor Levandowski have denied that the documents were stolen and considering the fact that the papers had not been found under Uber's possession means Uber is therefore highly unlikely to avoid the injunction.

"Uber's assertion that they've never touched the 14,000 stolen files is disingenuous at best, given their refusal to look in the most obvious place: the computers and devices owned by the head of their self-driving program," Johnny Luu, a Waymo spokesman, said in a statement.

Levandowski is not cooperating with Uber

The team in charge of defending Uber in court has stated that to this date they have not been able to find any evidence that proves that they do not have the Waymo's files under they possession. In addition to that, there is another complication: Mr. Levandowski is not cooperating with Uber's lawyers in the document-search procedure.

Mr. Levandowski has invoked the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. His attorney later stated that Levandowski did that given the potential for criminal action. Uber officials have stated that they do not understand Mr. Levandowski's actions since he is not a defendant in the lawsuit, and therefore pledging for the Fifth Amendment seems illogical.

In another subject, Waymo is conducting a different lawsuit against Levandowski and the other founder of Otto, Lior Ron based on an accusation that they started building a company that would compete with Google while they both still worked there.

Source: NY Times