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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

#81

Post by kbenson »

techinformed56 wrote: post #68
kbenson wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree there is a bias in the media regarding Uber, that didn't form in a vacuum. There have been numerous fairly bad missteps from the company. I think it's less a case of the media steering the public as is is the media conforming to public opinion in some cases and showing the public what it expects, since the public is getting a fairly bad impression of Uber, and that's not entirely because of how the medi…

Fair enough! But what do you say of this article in NYT today on this ruling? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/technology/uber-self-driv... Selectively quoting only stuff about Engineer and not quoting anything on actual injunction (which is a win for uber) seems like steering towards a negative narrative against Uber. Again we can dislike Uber's policies etc. But journalist also needs to lay out facts as they are.…

> Selectively quoting only stuff about Engineer and not quoting anything on actual injunction (which is a win for uber) seems like steering towards a negative narrative against Uber.

In my opinion, calling any of this a win for Uber is a bit of a stretch. If there were no court case, Uber would be entirely unrestricted. Waymo asked for a lot of restrictions, and was granted relatively little. That's better than it could have been for Uber, but still not as good as no injunctions. It's a "win" in the same way that if someone mugged me and only took my inexpensive watch instead of my wallet and smartphone I would have "won". Sure, it could have been worse, but calling it a win seems odd to me. It only makes sense when you narrow your scope to the battle, instead of the war, and to my eyes puts it in the realm of propaganda. I much prefer "good for Uber" or "bad for Uber" or "better than widely expected".

That said, it doesn't change my earlier point at all. If at this point the public is very receptive to and feeds off more evidence of Uber's wrongdoing, then playing to that by the media is to be expected (if still to be condemned). Uber, because of its entire business model is based on disruption that different people see as extremely positive or extremely negative, likely never had a chance at being represented in an unbiased way. In the beginning, that bias probably went both ways. As time has gone on, there's been more negative news to feed to the the thresher than positive, and at this point it's a feedback loop.

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

#82

Post by [deleted] »

oculusthrift wrote: post #46
darwhy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With how many questionable practices Uber is guilty of partaking in, I wouldn't be surprised if attempting to manipulate Hacker News was one of them.

think it's funny you say that when the company I see the most employees from on HN is Google.

[deleted]

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

#83

Post by tmh79 »

manyoso wrote: post #52
eddieplan9 wrote: post #36

The title screams bias and misinformation. It presumes Uber took technology from Waymo, which the judge rules against by stating that "Waymo’s patent theories are too weak to support any provisional relief" and "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".

Contrary, it says that Uber either knew or should have known that he took those 14,000 files and that undoubtedly those files were used by Uber to develop LIDAR. It says that Waymo has shown evidence of trade secret misuse enough to grant provisional relief. It is not a knock out blow against Uber, but look at the relief granted with regard to more discover. Uber has to do a complete accounting of everyone who talked…

I'm interpreting this differently than you are.

It says nothing about trade secret _misuse_ but alsip does discuss trade secret theft, which is an important distinction. So far, there is no evidence that Uber has used any waymo trade secrets in their SDC program, and if there was any evidence the program would have been shut down BUT there is significant evidence that Levandowsky did steal a treasure trove of documents as he was on his way out the door.

What the ruling does show is that Levandowsky is considered to be toxic, and will not be allowed to work at uber on any programs that he may have stolen trade secrets for.

It is entirely possible that Levandowsky downloaded the 14k files for his use, but they never impacted the designs at uber, at least in a legally provable form.

I am not familiar enough with case law in this arena to know the legal intricacies but my initial reaction is that, while uber is not off the hook, the potential damage they may receive as an outcome of this has has been reduced immensely (shut down entire program => remove head exec running program) when compared with the rhetoric before this injunction was released.

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

#84

Post by Kiro »

ariwilson wrote: post #50
eddieplan9 wrote: post #36

The title screams bias and misinformation. It presumes Uber took technology from Waymo, which the judge rules against by stating that "Waymo’s patent theories are too weak to support any provisional relief" and "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".

Are you an Uber employee? Curious for full disclosure. I'm an Alphabet employee but not one working on Waymo-related projects, nor am I a lawyer who feels qualified to comment on this situation. Wish Groklaw was still around to interpret these rulings for us :(.

What a strange thing to ask for a completely normal comment. Like it's unthinkable that someone other than an Uber employee would say it.

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

#85

Post by tmh79 »

manyoso wrote: post #29
pfarnsworth wrote: post #15

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…

I think Waymo laywers are very happy with the expedited discovery ruling and the order that Uber must make every effort to compel the return of the 14,000 files. This might not have been the bombshell ruling against Uber that they were hoping for, but it sets up that bombshell ruling if they can actually find the evidence with this new discovery.

You could also look at it through a different lens. It seems that the scope of possible harm has been reduced from "everyone must stop working on SDCs" to "maybe you might need to let the Levandowsky guy go, and stop making your own lidar".

Also, from what I understand, the real benefit to uber was from Levandowsky bringing 100 former google eng with him to bootstrap uber SDC project. Well, those 100 eng are at uber now, or maybe they've moved on, but point being the damage is done, and you can't undo that.

Waymo wants uber SDC shut down, they feel robbed, and anything less than that in their view is not justice.

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

#86

Post by kbenson »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #40
manyoso wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Waymo laywers are very happy with the expedited discovery ruling and the order that Uber must make every effort to compel the return of the 14,000 files. This might not have been the bombshell ruling against Uber that they were hoping for, but it sets up that bombshell ruling if they can actually find the evidence with this new discovery.

I disagree. It's only good if they find something, which to me is doubtful given the fact they didn't find something already, and given the fact that the judge didn't issue a single injunction against Uber for trade secrets. As far as I can tell from reading the injunction, there wasn't a single case of a trade secret from those documents making its way into Uber's technology. The fact that none of the technology mad…

> The fact that none of the technology made it into their Lidar designs makes it hard to believe that anything will be found.

This is a bit confusing. If none of the technology made it into their designs, why was a manufacturer delivering a part proprietary to Google to them? That's my understanding of what kicked this whole thing off, Google being accidentally CC'd by a manufacturer for a purchase of a part that nobody else should have known about. If that's correct, while it doesn't necessarily mean that Google tech was utilized in some integral component, it does signal that they weren't averse to using that tech in some fashion.

I'm left wondering if the real meat of this case is to be found as Google examines the hardware, which it sounds like they've now been given the go ahead to do.

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

#87

Post by tmh79 »

joshuamorton wrote: post #79
pfarnsworth wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cove…

that last edit you made is a very important distinction, and as far as I understand, the future of the case more or less hinges on waymos ability to prove that stolen info made its way into designs. Its entirely possible that Levandowsky stole some documents intending to use them for a nefarious purpose, but the influence/info from those documents never made it into uber Lidar, at least in a provable way.

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

#88

Post by pfarnsworth »

joshuamorton wrote: post #79
pfarnsworth wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cove…

> "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."

If this is your conclusion, then I think you misread what the injunction said. The point of the expedited discovery is to figure out whether or not the documents were used by Uber. The idea that there is "no question" that the documents were used is false.

     "Finally, as to whether Uber has used any information enumerated inWaymo’s list of trade secrets, that is the main question on the instant motion. Accordingly,Waymo has received expedited discovery — including an inspection of defendants’ LiDAR devices, document production, and depositions of defendants’ engineers and experts — to shed light on the answer. Insofar as Waymo still falls short of showing use as to certain asserted trade secrets, this order declines to fill the gap with adverse inferences at this stage."
The injunction says that there are "serious questions" but definitely not enough to deserve a preliminary injunction.

    "That being said, Waymo has shown at least serious questions going to the merits concerning whether some information within the 14,000-plus downloaded files has been used  by defendants and qualifies for trade secret protection"
Again, this is just "serious questions" but there is no smoking gun, and the point of the trial. And don't forget that even the judge says that the discovery could turn up nothing.

    "Further discovery may ultimately disprove even Waymo’s revised position that  is not generally known and economically valuable in the field."

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

#90

Post by joshuamorton »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #88
joshuamorton wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cove…

> "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." If this is your conclusion, then I think you misread what the injunction said. The point of the expedited discovery is to figure out whether or not the documents were used by Uber. The idea…

"Again, that Fuji -- and, at least on the record, no other LiDAR -- copies specific GBr3 specifications is striking evidence suggesting that at least some evidence from Waymo's files has already found its way into Uber's Lidar designs."

"At this stage, that is sufficient to extrapolate that at least some of the information in the 14,000-plus downloads likely qualifies for trade secret protection, and certain relief is warranted to prevent the misuse of those downloads as this litigation progresses."

Note that these two quotes are about a separate way that the Fuji likely infringes on the GBr3.

It really does seem like Alsup would have provided further relief if waymo hadn't been so broad in their claims of infringement (again, see footnote 6: "Waymo's inequitable conduct is factored into the relief granted herein")

It seems to generally come down to this:

"For similar reasons, this order also declines, at this stage, to enjoin Uber from using even the specific asserted trade secrets on which Waymo has shown serious questions going to the merits — i.e., Even a limited injunction as to these specific features would impose hardship on Uber’s overall LiDAR development that is disproportionate to Waymo’s limited showing of misappropriation by defendants thus far"

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