Uber in more hot soup: Alphabet's Waymo sues for infringing patent

Wire

Uber in more hot soup: Alphabet’s Waymo sues for infringing patent

Waymo, the self driving car unit of Alphabet (Google’s parent company), sues Uber for stealing their patented technology. According to the filed complain, the lawsuit is an action against Uber for “trade secret misappropriation, patent infringement, and unfair competition”.

The lawsuit is alleging against founder of self driving truck startup Otto, Anthony Levandowski, who was previously a manager at Waymo, for stealing “over 14,000 highly confidential and proprietary design files for Waymo’s various hardware systems, including designs of Waymo’s LiDAR and circuit board”.

Uber acquired Otto for $680m last year, where Uber had an interested in Otto’s own LiDAR sensor. Which makes Otto, Uber’s problem.

The LiDAR mentioned in the blog post that detailed the allegations, is custom-built by Waymo. LiDAR stands for “Light Detection and Ranging”, and is used for detection and measurement of an object’s shape, speed and movement by “bouncing millions of laser beams off surrounding objects and measuring how long it takes for the light to reflect”.

While LiDAR is not unique to any particular company, Waymo found out (apparently, accidentally) through a supplier that Uber’s LiDAR circuit board resembles Waymo’s own LiDAR design. Allegedly, Levandowski “downloaded 9.7 GB of Waymo’s highly confidential files and trade secrets, including blueprints, design files and testing documentation.”

The blog post also mentions that other former Waymo employees currently working at Otto/Uber may have downloaded additional confidential information “including supplier lists, manufacturing details and statements of work with highly technical information.”

All sounds very conspiracy theory, but Waymo thinks this was a planned stint to steal trade secrets and IP. While Alphabet has worked with Uber in many ares, Waymo is taking a stand against this. As Waymo puts it, “we didn’t make this decision lightly. However, given the overwhelming facts that our technology has been stolen, we have no choice but to defend our investment and development of this unique technology.”