Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Judge orders Uber not to use technology taken from Waymo

seattletimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 134 posts

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

#91

Post by manyoso »

tmh79 wrote: post #83
manyoso wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 documen…

In the expedited discovery done so far Uber has claimed privilege for huge amounts of requested documents. If you read the order, the Judge is signaling that this isn't going to be allowed to continue. One of the reasons he turned down the adverse inference is basically that he expects discovery going forward to favor Waymo and the adverse inference question is not necessary to decide now.

The ruling in general gives the definite impression that the Judge is very interested in seeing the evidence one way or another whether stolen tech was used by Uber and claims of privilege and 5th amendment will be greatly hindered going forward.

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

#92

Post by manyoso »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #66
manyoso wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't just the order to return the documents. Uber is compelled by June 23rd for a complete and chronological record of everyone at Uber or on behalf of Uber who discussed LIDAR with Anthony and what they talked about. They have to question all of these people about knowledge about those 14,000 files and contents. Under oath. How many employees do you think that is? How many people? If Anthony discussed these 14,0…

You're presuming that they will find something. I'm presuming they won't. None of the technology made it into Uber's Lidar design, and already no evidence was found that a single document made its way into Uber's servers. Remember, they already went through a round of discovery and they found nothing. The idea that Levandowski would be telling people "Well, from Google's documents, I remember x y z" sounds awfully ri…

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 in any way to use these files for anything in his future job? The Judge says in the order it is preposterous to think this. Still, it is up to Google to prove misuse and he is intent on giving them the discovery they need to do so if they can.

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

#93

Post by AnimalMuppet »

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.

More: It's usually only outside counsel who gets to see that kind of stuff. Even corporate attorneys don't.

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

#94

Post by manyoso »

tmh79 wrote: post #85
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.

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…

"It seems that the scope of possible harm has been reduced..."

The Judge specifically says in the ruling that a much stronger injunction can come at any point right up to the start of trial if Google is able to find additional evidence in the new discovery he is ordering. My read of the ruling is that the Judge expects that Google is likely to find just such evidence in the discovery he is newly ordering.

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

#95

Post by AnimalMuppet »

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.

Well, the judge requested federal prosecutors to take a look.

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

#96

Post by vilhelm_s »

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.

This was mentioned in the HN discussion[1] about the other order, which denied enforcing arbitration. There are two separate lawsuits, one against Uber (this one), and one against Levandowski. Because of his employment agreement, the Levandowski suit is done through arbitration rather than a court. Uber moved to consolidate the two suits and force the combined suit into arbitration, but the court denied the motion.

Also, the court also referred the case to the U.S. Attorney for a possible criminal investigation, so depending on what they decide Levandowski could come under criminal charges also. (He is already taking the 5th.)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14321044

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

#97

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Analemma_ wrote: post #33
idbehold wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber should start a suit against Levandowski.

Otto was fraud, with Uber's knowledge, right from the beginning. While Levandowski was working at Waymo, he and Kalanick had one of their little nighttime walks where they hashed out the deal: "you take Waymo's stuff, found a throwaway company, and we'll buy it a few months later". Of course, this couldn't be proved in court since there were no records of this deal, but it's absolutely what happened. (EDIT: Note that…

> Note that even Alsup thinks this is what happened, he just didn't think there was enough evidence to take action on it

This is only a preliminary injunction. Uber is entitled to the most favorable interpretation of the evidence for this motion. They won't get that later, though.

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

#98

Post by AnimalMuppet »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #17
delegate wrote: post #4

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

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

Well, they said they didn't pay for LiDAR. The company had only existed for a few months; it didn't have a big base of proprietary technology that was worth a bundle. So either the employees were worth hundreds of millions, or Uber was really paying for the stolen documents.

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

#99

Post by yeukhon »

vilhelm_s wrote: post #96
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.

This was mentioned in the HN discussion[1] about the other order, which denied enforcing arbitration. There are two separate lawsuits, one against Uber (this one), and one against Levandowski. Because of his employment agreement, the Levandowski suit is done through arbitration rather than a court. Uber moved to consolidate the two suits and force the combined suit into arbitration, but the court denied the motion. A…

Thanks, I didn't read that properly. Hopefully truth will come out of criminal investigation.

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

#100

Post by pfarnsworth »

joshuamorton wrote: post #90
pfarnsworth wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 i…

"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.

Post reply on HN