Judge orders Uber not to use technology taken from Waymo • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by i_like_lamp » Tue, May 16, 2017, 1:02 AM UTC

linkregister wrote: post #116

manyoso wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Judge is very clearly signaling that if any pilfered files were used by Uber that he is intent on getting to the bottom of it. And that all the claims of privilege that Uber has been claiming so far in the expedited discovery is about to go bye bye. The head of research on LIDAR at Uber had 14,000 files from Google that were pilfered before he left and he did this for purely for shits and giggles and not…

The narrative of Levandowski's theft of the documents is premature. If you read the forensic examiner's report, it amounts to "checked out project using TortoiseSVN, plugged in a USB device, installed proprietary Google Linux distribution." The "wiped" adjective is inaccurate since a disk format is required to install Linux. Levandowski didn't zero the hard drive or anything like that. There's no evidence yet that Wa…

Agree. There was a good analysis of the forensic expert's testimony by some other users here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14261591

There's a link to the testimony in that topmost comment too for those that want to read it for themselves.

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

#122

Post by i_like_lamp » Tue, May 16, 2017, 1:12 AM UTC

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.

If Uber turns out to be innocent as they claim, can they then turn around and sue Waymo? The amount of information Waymo has gotten on a competitor through discovery seems highly prejudicial.

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

#123

Post by i_like_lamp » Tue, May 16, 2017, 1:17 AM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #86

pfarnsworth wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nob…

I don't work in hardware, but a friend of mine who does said that it's not really all that surprising for two companies to end up with similar designs if they are working on a similar problem AND are using the same supplier. The supplier is providing their own expertise and some of that expertise comes from working with other customers.

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

#124

Post by i_like_lamp » Tue, May 16, 2017, 1:21 AM UTC

linkregister wrote: post #115

pfarnsworth wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think we read the injunction differently. On pages 13-15, Judge Alsop states that he found two instances of what he thought was obvious influence of trade secrets. I agree that this was Alsop's backhanded way of getting Uber to fire Levandowski; either Levandowski will reveal the documents and face prison, or he never had them on personal devices and Uber still has to fire him because he didn't produce them.

And if Levandowsky genuinely doesn't have the documents? After finally taking the time to read the forensic testimony myself, I found it very inconclusive. Yes, he may have taken the documents or he may not have. The evidence presented in the testimony was far from being a smoking gun. I highly encourage others to read the testimony for themselves and come to their own conclusion.

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

#125

Post by i_like_lamp » Tue, May 16, 2017, 1:23 AM UTC

yeukhon wrote: post #89

How come Levandowski isn't sued for stealing data? Doesn't what he did to Google considered stealing? I would have called for police investigation for someone so prominent stealing my company's data.

Check out the forensic expert's testimony for yourself. It's hardly conclusive that he took the files in question. Interpretations of the testimony are very speculative.

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

#126

Post by joshuamorton » Tue, May 16, 2017, 3:17 AM UTC

linkregister wrote: post #120

joshuamorton wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elsewhere in the thread its been explained that "google get's to look at Uber's Lidar" is really "Google's lawyers and some non-employee experts get to look at Uber's Lidar". Essentially its Chinese walled, your average Waymo engineer (in fact probably every waymo engineer) isn't going to see the documents.

Not to discount HN legal experts, but nowhere is third-party examination mentioned in the document. "Waymo attorney" and "Waymo expert" are the terms used. Edit: I don't think there's much risk of this. It's illegal enough that I doubt an individual engineer would risk prison over the corporation they happened to work for.

Right, waymo attorney is what it is, but waymo expert does not imply waymo employee (much like waymo attorney doesn't necessarily imply waymo employee either)

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

#127

Post by lern_too_spel » Tue, May 16, 2017, 6:48 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #104

Levandowski is going to come out of this OK. He was doing self-driving years before Google. As I've pointed out before, the whole LIDAR thing is a side issue. Google's LIDAR is another Velodyne-like spinning thing. Google's patented innovation is to make each scan beam slightly oval, which is marginally useful but not essential. Spinning 3D LIDAR units are research and prototyping tools. The future is either flash LI…

The LIDAR is just how Waymo realized some of its technology had been stolen. Presumably, they want to use discovery to find what else has been stolen.

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

#128

Post by mahyarm » Tue, May 16, 2017, 6:57 AM UTC

waisbrot wrote: post #74

mahyarm wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 comp…

In general although, how do you deal with this kind of prove a negative situation?

Hire high level employee X, talking while they are employed with your competitor or not, how do you prove they don't 'copy files' or bring documents with them to their house? Search their house? How do you know they didn't put them in some secret location?

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

#129

Post by pfarnsworth » Tue, May 16, 2017, 3:07 PM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #114

pfarnsworth wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"likely infringes" is absolutely false. Your bias is showing. There's evidence. But not enough for a preliminary injunction, which is why there's going to be a trial. If there were a smoking gun, then they would have issues a preliminary injunction. And there hasn't even been a question as to whether or not these are trade secrets. That's part of the trial.

1. A preliminary injunction was issued, just not a sweeping one 2. "is striking evidence" is a phrase that to me implies that the Uber lidar likely infringes, please explain if you disagree. 3. Speaking of bias, elsewhere in this thread you say "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." [0]. Given that Al…

"Striking evidence" is just that. Evidence. I'll wait for the results of the hearing to see what the overall judgement is. Have you forgotten that all trials have evidence both for and against? But the evidence wasn't enough to issue a preliminary injunction, which means that there is no smoking gun.

A preliminary injunction was issues against Levandowski, because as the judge said, there is more than enough evidence to suggest that he downloaded the files. Given the judge's decision, this injunction is a layup and pretty understandable. If the technology he allegedly stole made its way into Uber's technology, it would be an easy decision to give an injunction for Uber to stop development. But the judge even didn't issue a narrow injunction against any development in Lidar whatsoever. So that speaks volumes. Not winning a preliminary injunction is pretty huge.

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

#130

Post by joshuamorton » Tue, May 16, 2017, 3:56 PM UTC

pfarnsworth wrote: post #129

joshuamorton wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. A preliminary injunction was issued, just not a sweeping one 2. "is striking evidence" is a phrase that to me implies that the Uber lidar likely infringes, please explain if you disagree. 3. Speaking of bias, elsewhere in this thread you say "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." [0]. Given that Al…

"Striking evidence" is just that. Evidence. I'll wait for the results of the hearing to see what the overall judgement is. Have you forgotten that all trials have evidence both for and against? But the evidence wasn't enough to issue a preliminary injunction, which means that there is no smoking gun. A preliminary injunction was issues against Levandowski, because as the judge said, there is more than enough evidence…

>Evidence. I'll wait for the results of the hearing to see what the overall judgement is. Have you forgotten that all trials have evidence both for and against? But the evidence wasn't enough to issue a preliminary injunction, which means that there is no smoking gun.

Yes there was, that's what this document is.

>A preliminary injunction was issues against Levandowski

No, a preliminary injunction was issues against Uber preventing Levandowski from working on things. As far as the court is concerned, Levandowski isn't a party in this case. To be clear, this Order is an injunction against Uber, no one else. That's the way the court sees it (and this has been made pretty clear in prior arguments).

There was enough evidence to issue a preliminary injunction against uber, just not one that required them to stop working on lidar completely. This is despite what Alsup says at the end of page 12, which I read as being the main reason (and again, alsup clearly states this in footnote six) that the injunctive relief isn't stronger. Or in other words, Alsup was, based on the evidence provided, willing to place a stronger injunction against Uber, but has not as a way to 'punish' Waymo for overreaching in some of its claims.

I'd take some time to read section D. It pretty clearly explains all of this (basically, Waymo asked for the court to account for Adverse Interference to make a stronger judgement, and the court denied because Waymo was also misbehaving).