Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets
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Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets
#2And Google Ventures is an Uber investor... so Google is effectively suing one of their own portfolio companies.
Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets
#3Patents, or Trade Secrets?
Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets
#4From 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 LIDAR technology, Waymo says
> The lawsuit claims that a team of ex-Google engineers used critical technology, including the Lidar laser sensors, in the autonomous trucking startup they founded, and which Uber later acquired
I was confused as to what stealing a patent actually meant:)
Waymo has also posted this....
https://medium.com/@waymo/a-note-on-our-lawsuit-against-otto...
From this post...
> Recently, we received an unexpected email. One of our suppliers specializing in LiDAR components sent us an attachment (apparently inadvertently) of machine drawings of what was purported to be Uber’s LiDAR circuit board — except its design bore a striking resemblance to Waymo’s unique LiDAR design.
> We found that six weeks before his resignation this former employee, Anthony Levandowski, downloaded over 14,000 highly confidential and proprietary design files for Waymo’s various hardware systems, including designs of Waymo’s LiDAR and circuit board. To gain access to Waymo’s design server, Mr. Levandowski searched for and installed specialized software onto his company-issued laptop. Once inside, he downloaded 9.7 GB of Waymo’s highly confidential files and trade secrets, including blueprints, design files and testing documentation. Then he connected an external drive to the laptop. Mr. Levandowski then wiped and reformatted the laptop in an attempt to erase forensic fingerprints.
Ooops, that does sound bad after a first read.
Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets
#5And Google Ventures is an Uber investor... so Google is effectively suing one of their own portfolio companies.
GV is generally very arms length of google itself, in fact when I've pitched them they specifically say as much. They'll make investments that are supportive to the google mission generally, and sometimes that investment is a hedge I would imagine.
Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets
#6From 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…
It's kind amazing that Google keeps reiterating how their incredible security protects your data, and that even employees are extremely carefully monitored. Yet their confidential trade secrets were taken by a dude who seemingly didn't have access to them as part of his job (since he had to go install the software) and a portable hard drive.
The post also says he talked about replicating their technology at a competitor with colleagues months before he actually stole the data too. Generally if you work on something confidential, and you start talking about taking it elsewhere, someone reports it or something.
Sidebar question if there are any armchair lawyers around: While I expect Uber to lose this lawsuit based on the type of evidence being claimed here, is it also possible for Uber to sue the supplier for leaking their confidential data back to Google? Because that seems like an incredible lapse of confidentiality in itself. Or will the notion that it wasn't legitimately their confidential data in the end, make Uber's own claim void?
Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets
#7And Google Ventures is an Uber investor... so Google is effectively suing one of their own portfolio companies.
Companies sue other companies they have relationships with fairly often.
For example, Samsung is still a hardware supplier to Apple, so Apple is suing its own supplier in the Apple v. Samsung case.
Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets
#8Patents, or Trade Secrets?
My guess would be trade secrets since patents would be public information and afaik the technology isn't currently being sold this wouldn't be subject to patent infringement laws. Not a lawyer though, so I could be wrong.
Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets
#9From 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…
Yea that's incredibly bad if that's what that guy did.. in general for EE designs, the schematic/layouts are not that hard to deduce how you would do it if you are in contact with the company that makes the LIDAR device (the unique and difficult part -- basically just need to ask them, like "yo, how roughly should I interface with this thing and whats your recommendation on a number of the components.. and can you give me a reference schematic.."). So copying stuff means that the guy actually probably was clueless as to how it actually worked and planned to just hand it off to somebody else who did understand it -- so definitely super bad...
Re: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets
#10In related news, Tesla is accusing ex-autopilot director Sterling Anderson of stealing code from Tesla before starting up Aurora with Chris Urmson (the former CTO of Alphabet's self driving car program):
https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/26/tesla-sues-ex-autopilot-di...