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Judge orders Uber not to use technology taken from Waymo

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Re: Judge orders Uber not to use technology taken from Waymo

#71

Post by Fricken »

mabbo wrote: post #62
golfer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo is going to be able to inspect Uber's LIDAR and get additional expedited discovery: "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’ ongoing work involving LiDAR — including, without limitation,schematics, work orders, sourc…

Waymo is further granted the right to pull down the defendants' pants, and point and laugh at their genitals. I mean, seriously, they've just been granted a shit load of access to their biggest competitors secrets. Pray they don't abuse that...

The lawsuit isn't really about protecting trade secrets for some soon-to-be-obsolete lidar technology, that's just a convenient tool for punishing Levandowski and Uber for hatching this scheme.

Re: Judge orders Uber not to use technology taken from Waymo

#72

Post by dlgeek »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #27
idbehold wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber should start a suit against Levandowski.

Uber should have uncovered this during due diligence. I'm not sure if they can even sue Levandowski at this point.

Waymo's alleging they did* - there's a third party due-diligence report prepared by Stroz that both Uber and Levandowski especially are trying really hard to keep from handing over. Levandowski even filed an emergency appeal as a non-party to the case (which was rejected) to be prevented from just naming who it was who prepared the report.

* (Well, Waymo's alleging that the court should make an adverse inference that they did because of Uber's behavior around the report).

Re: Judge orders Uber not to use technology taken from Waymo

#73

Post by mabbo »

dlgeek wrote: post #70
mabbo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo is further granted the right to pull down the defendants' pants, and point and laugh at their genitals. I mean, seriously, they've just been granted a shit load of access to their biggest competitors secrets. Pray they don't abuse that...

Doesn't work that way. When they say "Waymo", they really mean "Waymo's attorney's and hired independent expert(s)". The attorney's get to see the stuff as "Attorney's Eyes Only" (AEO) and then report back summaries to their clients. They have an ethical obligation not to disclose the full details.

Excellent point. My "pants down" joke, however, shall remain!

Re: Judge orders Uber not to use technology taken from Waymo

#74

Post by waisbrot »

mahyarm wrote: post #58
yazaddaruvala wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber should have uncovered this during due diligence. I'm not sure if they can even sue Levandowski at this point.

How can you although? Show us what is on every hard drive you ever owned? Uber doesnt have access to googles internal security logs.

The court order says that Uber was talking with Levandowski about buying his company _while he was still working at Google_:

> Meanwhile, emails between Uber executives on January 12 and January 13 showed they had prepared a document titled “NewCo Milestones v5” for Levandowski to review in advance of a meeting the following day.

He didn't quit until the 27th. If you're poaching someone highly-placed off of your competitor you either have a plan for how you'll prove that they _didn't_ steal secrets or (like Uber) you get court orders to expose all your files.

Re: Judge orders Uber not to use technology taken from Waymo

#75

Post by clint »

mabbo wrote: post #73
dlgeek wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't work that way. When they say "Waymo", they really mean "Waymo's attorney's and hired independent expert(s)". The attorney's get to see the stuff as "Attorney's Eyes Only" (AEO) and then report back summaries to their clients. They have an ethical obligation not to disclose the full details.

Excellent point. My "pants down" joke, however, shall remain!

Can you explain the joke?

Re: Judge orders Uber not to use technology taken from Waymo

#76

Post by AnimalMuppet »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #23
jforman wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find your analysis to be incorrect. To avoid needless bickering about it, here are the first few paragraphs of the ruling, which people can derive their own conclusions from: "By way of summary, this order finds plaintiff Waymo LLC has shown compellingevidence that its former star engineer, Anthony Levandowski, downloaded over 14,000confidential files from Waymo immediately before leaving his employment there. The…

You either didn't read the injunction carefully, or you didn't understand it. It's a pretty huge win for Uber. They don't need to stop working on self-driving cars at all. They just need to ensure Levandowski doesn't work on anything Lidar related, which he already doesn't. The only thing that is potentially a problem for Uber is that they need to use whatever methods to compel Levandowski to hand over the 14,000 doc…

Remember, though, that this is just a preliminary injunction. Waymo could get considerably more as the case goes on, they're just going to have to work harder to get it.

Re: Judge orders Uber not to use technology taken from Waymo

#77

Post by mannykannot »

eddieplan9 wrote: post #44
enraged_camel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>It presumes Uber took technology from Waymo, which the judge rules against FTFA: "Judge William Alsup in San Francisco says in the ruling that Waymo has shown “compelling evidence” that a former star engineer named Anthony Levandowski downloaded confidential files before leaving Waymo. The Judge also says evidence shows that before he left Waymo, Levandowski and Uber planned for Uber to acquire a company formed by…

And you can reasonably draw the conclusion that is a plot for stealing technology? It's perfectly reasonable to tell someone that, go make an MVP and we will acquire it.

> It's perfectly reasonable to tell someone that, go make an MVP and we will acquire it.

You have a point in general, but it is some of specifics of this case that raise doubts about whether that is the whole story.

Re: Judge orders Uber not to use technology taken from Waymo

#78

Post by my_ghola »

mabbo wrote: post #73
dlgeek wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't work that way. When they say "Waymo", they really mean "Waymo's attorney's and hired independent expert(s)". The attorney's get to see the stuff as "Attorney's Eyes Only" (AEO) and then report back summaries to their clients. They have an ethical obligation not to disclose the full details.

Excellent point. My "pants down" joke, however, shall remain!

The lawyer can pull down the defendants' pants and point and laugh, then tell Waymo how funny it was.

Re: Judge orders Uber not to use technology taken from Waymo

#79

Post by joshuamorton »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #67
joshuamorton wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Disclosure: I work at google) You're ignoring a big part of this though: Waymo is given expedited discovery and is allowed to look at Uber's hardware. The injunction says that Uber cannot use Levandowski or any of the work he brought, and so Google['s expert] is allowed to look at Uber's hardware and make sure that none of it is based on the stolen documents. On the assumption that waymo's claims are true (ie. Uber…

Read the injunction. They already went through the design. The judge didn't issue an injunction against using or even continuing development on Uber's Lidar. What more do you expect to find? If Waymo found a design during expedited discovery that is different from what they submitted to the judge, then I assume that is perjury and obviously needs to be punished to the full extent of the law. I doubt this will happen…

I did. The injunction states that the Fuji lidar may be infringing on trade secrets, the court can't rule and is unwilling got make a prelim injunction, telling Uber to chuck it off a cliff, but will allow expert analysis to confirm. The problem is that Waymo made some overbroad claims and so Alsup is punishing them for it by making the injunciton weaker (and he states as much in footnote 6). That's also what is covered in part 6 of the injunction relief. They are granted additional depositions and analysis of "schematics, work orders, source code, notes, and emails" regarding lidar.

In fact, reading the trade secret infringement part, it reads as though there's no question that levandowski stole documents and that those documents were used to create Uber's lidar using proprietary information from Google. That doesn't bode well.

Edit: Or in other words, Alsup's questions aren't whether or not proprietary info was stolen, but whether or not it is still being actively used.

Re: Judge orders Uber not to use technology taken from Waymo

#80

Post by gpm »

delegate wrote: post #4

Didn't Uber pay like $680,000,000 for this technology ?

Apparently according to uber not at all, to quote the ruling

> Defendants have also presented an “independent development” narrative in which they developed their own LiDAR technology without using any confidential information from Waymo. That narrative, however, studiously omitted any inquiry into Levandowski’s work, essentially erasing him from the history of Uber’s self-driving car development. Put differently, the record shows Uber bought Levandowski’s services for a tremendous amount of money and positioned him at the forefront of its self-driving car efforts but is barren on how Levandowski has been earning that money and title.

(and later)

> Indeed, defendants have already carefully crafted a narrative of their self-driving car efforts that conspicuously and incredibly denies any meaningful contribution by Levandowski - even though Uber, in a deal worth approximately $680 million dollars, hired him to lead those efforts.

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