Google’s Waymo drives Uber to court
Waymo, formerly Google’s self-driving car division, has targeted Uber and its subsidiary Otto over alleged patent infringement and theft of trade secrets.
In 2016, Google’s self-driving car programme became Waymo, a stand-alone company operating alongside Google.
Otto is an Uber-owned self-driving truck company.
Now, Waymo has accused a former manager who is now at Uber of downloading more than 14,000 highly confidential and proprietary files shortly before resigning.
The files included Waymo’s LiDAR (a laser-based scanning and mapping technology) circuit board designs.
Filed yesterday, February 23 at the US District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division, the claim said Uber and Otto had misappropriated and infringed Waymo’s LiDAR technology.
“Fair competition spurs new technical innovation, but what has happened here is not fair competition. Instead, Otto and Uber have taken Waymo’s IP so that they could avoid incurring the risk, time and expense of independently developing their own technology,” said the suit.
The claim added that this “calculated theft” netted Otto employees “over half a billion dollars” and allowed Uber to “revive a stalled programme, all at Waymo’s expense”.
In addition, according to the claim, “a number” of Waymo employees subsequently left to join the new business and had downloaded additional Waymo trade secrets before their departure.
Waymo also claimed that Uber has infringed its patents: US numbers 8,836,922; 9,368,936; and 9,086,273.
All the patents concern Waymo’s LiDAR technology.
The self-driving car company is seeking injunctive relief, triple damages, punitive damages, attorneys’ fees and a jury trial.
WIPR contacted Uber for comment on the allegations, including those against the employees, and the company said: “We take the allegations made against Otto and Uber employees seriously and we will review this matter carefully.”
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