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Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

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Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#41

Post by sillysaurus3 »

gwern wrote: post #28
chollida1 wrote: post #4

From another source to provide some colour: > According to a lawsuit filed today in federal court in California, Waymo accuses Anthony Levandowski, an engineer who left Google to found Otto and now serves as a top ranking Uber executive, stole 14,000 highly confidential documents from Google before departing to start his own company. Among the documents were schematics of a circuit board and details about radar and L…

On the other hand, we know that public statements about lawsuits are always a pack of lies as everyone tries to look as wronged as possible: remember YC's bluster about the Cruise co-founder lawsuit, right before they had to settle for dozens/hundreds of millions? or remember the Oculus lawsuit where they alleged almost the exact same thing (Carmack stealing thousands of sooper-sekrit VR documents/files) and wound up…

remember YC's bluster about the Cruise co-founder lawsuit, right before they had to settle for dozens/hundreds of millions?

Is this a guess?

http://www.businessinsider.com/car-startup-cruise-settles-le...

A representative for Guillory declined to discuss the settlement amount, but said the terms were "mutually agreeable." As part of the settlement, the parties have both agreed to dismiss their lawsuits.

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#42

Post by sriram_sun »

What kind of employee would download 14K files to a personal drive right before quitting? It is trivially easy to watch what files get copied over to external drives.

I think you can follow the money trail here and find some answers for sure. Now if Uber/Otto has a clause that prohibits employees from bringing in confidential data from previous companies, how can they be held liable? Does Google have to prove that those stolen documents were actually used in Uber designs?

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#45

Post by chrisper »

chollida1 wrote: post #4

From another source to provide some colour: > According to a lawsuit filed today in federal court in California, Waymo accuses Anthony Levandowski, an engineer who left Google to found Otto and now serves as a top ranking Uber executive, stole 14,000 highly confidential documents from Google before departing to start his own company. Among the documents were schematics of a circuit board and details about radar and L…

Is it just me or is the font on medium.com super blurry?

Also, how did google know he downloaded all the stuff through some software?

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#46

Post by lindowe »

the_watcher wrote: post #26

Minor fix: Waymo is suing for stealing secrets, not patents. As far as I know, it's not actually possible to steal a patent.

Infringement of patents (the ’273 patent, entitled “Microrod Compression of Laser Beam in Combination with Transmit Lens")

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#47

Post by vgt »

leereeves wrote: post #33
chollida1 wrote: post #4

From another source to provide some colour: > According to a lawsuit filed today in federal court in California, Waymo accuses Anthony Levandowski, an engineer who left Google to found Otto and now serves as a top ranking Uber executive, stole 14,000 highly confidential documents from Google before departing to start his own company. Among the documents were schematics of a circuit board and details about radar and L…

> I was confused as to what stealing a patent actually meant Indeed. The current title of the article is > Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets Secrets, not Patents. If patents was the original title perhaps the author was confused.

The filing itself claims both [0].

[0] https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dzPLynxaXuQjY3dkllZ2ZKb0k...

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#48

Post by valkea »

xt00 wrote: post #11
chollida1 wrote: post #4

From another source to provide some colour: > According to a lawsuit filed today in federal court in California, Waymo accuses Anthony Levandowski, an engineer who left Google to found Otto and now serves as a top ranking Uber executive, stole 14,000 highly confidential documents from Google before departing to start his own company. Among the documents were schematics of a circuit board and details about radar and L…

I'm sure it doesn't sit well with google that a group of guys left and started a self-driving company that very quickly was acquired for a ton of money.. Most likely google wants to get a piece of the action since essentially they practically deserve it if their IP is being used to help the company make their technology.

Sure, that's what Google's lawyers claim.

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#49

Post by vmarsy »

tajen wrote: post #37
chollida1 wrote: post #4

From another source to provide some colour: > According to a lawsuit filed today in federal court in California, Waymo accuses Anthony Levandowski, an engineer who left Google to found Otto and now serves as a top ranking Uber executive, stole 14,000 highly confidential documents from Google before departing to start his own company. Among the documents were schematics of a circuit board and details about radar and L…

How does Google build such forsenics? Do they have spyware monitoring all their company laptops?

I would assume that the servers that host big trade secrets would log everything happening. There wouldn't be a need to log the laptop itself.

Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets

#50

Post by daurnimator »

xt00 wrote: post #24
smilekzs wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There however could be custom-ordered parts on the BOM, documentation of which might be under NDA.

Yes good point. That would be super obvious that they stole it then.. "yea, could I order the BA33525 part that you custom built for somebody else.. yea I know its undocumented, but I know you have it somehow...."

You do that sort of thing all the time though with electronics: I'll open it up, and find some undocumented chip variant and see if I can source it elsewhere, I'll also search+email around to see if I can find a datasheet anywhere. If it's not printed on the chip you'll probably be able to get it out of JTAG.
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