Judge orders Uber not to use technology taken from Waymo

This ruling was actually relatively good news for Uber, it could have been worse. It's only a partial preliminary injunction, they can still continue working on self-driving technology.

Wow, this article is so far off the ruling. Alsup found the patent infringement cases meritless and said Waymo's trade secret claims are an overreach and that Waymo is trying to claim ownership over general principles and approaches in the field.

Uber will be allowed to keep working on the SDCs and on LIDAR. Only strikes against Uber is that Levandowski can't work on LIDAR, which Uber already took action on before the injunction was unsealed, and the discovery rights granted to Waymo.

This article is a perfect example of the extreme media bias against Uber.

Edit: two downvotes within seconds of posting the truth? I know that downvote baiting is frowned upon but these posts are filled with so many people astroturfing for Google, Waymo and Lyft that this comment is going to get downvoted anyways, because some people really don't want the truth to be the most upvoted comment. Honestly all these stories look like the Apple stories that inevitable turn into fanboy flamewars. There are so many HNers with conflicts of interest upvoting these stories and participating in them that almost none of the comments can be trusted as genuine or rational.

Some highlights from the injunction:

1. "Waymo’s patent theories are too weak to support any provisional relief."

2. "By contrast, the trade secrets case presented by Waymo does warrant provisional relief."

3. "Moreover, it has become clear that Waymo has both overreached in defining its trade secrets and made moving targets out of its asserted trade secrets to evade defensive arguments. Under these circumstances and on this record, no adverse inference that could be drawn in Waymo’s favor would justify overlooking these problems, pretending that all 121 of Waymo’s asserted trade secrets are valid, and enjoining defendants from using any of them so as to effectively halt Uber’s self-driving efforts until trial."

4. "Waymo is hereby granted further expedited discovery in aid of possible further provisional relief. Subject to the protective order, and upon reasonable notice, Waymo’s counsel and one expert may inspect any and all aspects of defendants’ ongoingwork involving LiDAR — including, without limitation,schematics, work orders, source code, notes, and emails — whether or not said work resulted in any prototype or device."

EDIT: one more I forgot, which is interesting:

5. This order, however, threatens no sanctions against Levandowski. It simply directs Uber, a private employer, to do whatever it can to ensure that its employees return 14,000-plus pilfered files to their rightful owner. If Uber were to threaten Levandowski with termination for noncompliance,that threat would be backed up by only Uber’s power as a private employer, and Levandowski would remainfree to forfeit his private employment to preserve his Fifth Amendment privilege. No binding case law holdsthat the Fifth Amendment prohibits such actions by private employers. In short, in complying with this order,Uber has no excuse under the Fifth Amendment to pull any punches as to Levandowski.

Basically, if Levandowski refuses to turn over the documents, Uber is forced to fire him, which means the $250,000,000 they already gave him goes up in smoke.

They paid for the company and the employees. They didn't pay for LiDAR, which is the basis of the suit.

It's only hacker news, don't get so worked up. People are allowed to disagree with you regardless of what you feel your best intentions are. Why do you care what anonymous internet people think?