Google's Waymo Accuses Uber of Stealing Its Autonomous Secrets
Waymo is suing over claims that a former employee stole the design for one of its LIDAR systems and brought it to a competitor. The alleged theft of Waymo’s intellectual property came to light after the company was accidentally privy to an email chain that described an Uber design for a LIDAR circuit board that looked very familiar.
So familiar, in fact, that the Google-backed Waymo filed a lawsuit on Thursday in a California federal court. The suit accuses former Google employee Anthony Levandowski of stealing its tech for the LIDAR sensor used by the Otto autonomous startup company. Unfortunately for Waymo, Uber paid $680 million for Otto last August and is currently using the potentially stolen designs.
According to a blog post written by the Waymo team, Levandowski downloaded over 14,000 confidential and proprietary designs for its current software six weeks before leaving Google. Those files included designs for the LIDAR and circuit board.
“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,” claims the Waymo posting. “Months before the mass download of files, Mr. Levandowski told colleagues that he had plans to ‘replicate’ Waymo’s technology at a competitor.”
The company also says it thinks other former employees have left its ranks to join Otto and Uber’s self-driving efforts, bringing valuable trade secrets with them. Waymo says it’s all part of one big collaborative plan to steal its intellectual property.
The court filling includes patent infringement, unlawful misappropriation of industrial secrets, and unfair business practices. Waymo wants an injunction to end the use of what it believes are its own designs, and is demanding a trial over the matter.
[Image: Waymo]
A staunch consumer advocate tracking industry trends and regulation. Before joining TTAC, Matt spent a decade working for marketing and research firms based in NYC. Clients included several of the world’s largest automakers, global tire brands, and aftermarket part suppliers. Dissatisfied with the corporate world and resentful of having to wear suits everyday, he pivoted to writing about cars. Since then, that man has become an ardent supporter of the right-to-repair movement, been interviewed on the auto industry by national radio broadcasts, driven more rental cars than anyone ever should, participated in amateur rallying events, and received the requisite minimum training as sanctioned by the SCCA. Handy with a wrench, Matt grew up surrounded by Detroit auto workers and managed to get a pizza delivery job before he was legally eligible. He later found himself driving box trucks through Manhattan, guaranteeing future sympathy for actual truckers. He continues to conduct research pertaining to the automotive sector as an independent contractor and has since moved back to his native Michigan, closer to where the cars are born. A contrarian, Matt claims to prefer understeer — stating that front and all-wheel drive vehicles cater best to his driving style.
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"Show me the blueprints." "Show me the blueprints." "Show me the blueprints." "Show me the blueprints!"
Once the ambulance chasers take over the shop with all their clueless, self righteous childishness, no wonder the engineers are leaving. Levandowski knew as much about autonomous tech as anyone. His brain wouldn't magically be erased by leaving his Waymo office. If he did bring actual documents, the only role they served were one of convenience. Not having to retype all the stuff, and rerun the experiments, at a new place. The value add of Otto was never a circuit board design for a technology (Lidar) that, with the current fashionableness of all things "self driving," are obsoleted every six months anyway. Instead, the value add was application of knowledge gained in the context of a more general solution to "'se;d driving," to one more specifically aimed at a much simpler subset of the problem(s) Levandowski worked on at Google/Waymo: That of heavy trucks driving on highways. Waymo could have specifically targetted trucks as well, and Levandowski would never have left. But they didn't, so he did, and in the process helped make "self driving" something with a least a sliver of potential to be something more than just hype. Which is more than any lawyer, investor, manager nor other self promoting semi literate neither have, nor ever will, accomplish. Which, of course, won't stop them from doing the only thing they are capable of: Trying to get the power of the state to help them stick their useless, grubby fingers into value chains created and fed by those that are actually trying to do something useful with their lives.