Judge weighs in on Uber, Waymo case

U.S. District Judge William Alsup said Uber likely knew or should have known that Anthony Levandowski took and retained possession of Waymo’s confidential files, but Waymo’s patent infringement accusations proved meritless.    William Alsup, U.S. District Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, said in a ruling last Thursday that Uber likely knew or at least should have known that one of its employees, Anthony Levandowski, had taken and retained possession of confidential files belonging to his former employer, Waymo.
   Levandowski worked as an engineer at Waymo, the automated vehicle subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet Inc., until Jan. 27, 2016. He established Otto, a self-driving truck startup, on Feb. 1, 2016. Uber purchased Otto for $680 million in August 2016, and hired Levandowski to lead its self-driving car efforts.
   Waymo had filed the lawsuit against Uber in February of this year, alleging intellectual property theft and patent infringement by Levandowski.
   “The bottom line is the evidence indicates that Uber hired Levandowski even though it knew or should have known that he possessed over 14,000 confidential Waymo files likely containing Waymo’s intellectual property; that at least some information from those files, if not the files themselves, has seeped into Uber’s own LiDAR development efforts; and that at least some of said information likely qualifies for trade secret protection,” Alsup said.
   However, Alsup said not all of Waymo’s 121 asserted “trade secrets” actually qualify as such, and few have been tracked into the accused technology. He also said Waymo’s patent arguments are too weak to support any provisional relief.
   Uber can continue building its autonomous-driving program, but Alsup said the order “grants important but narrowly-tailored provisional relief necessary to equitably balance the parties’ competing needs at this stage.”
   Alsup ordered Uber to prevent Levandowski and all other officers, directors, employees and agents of defendants from consulting, copying or using the downloaded files from Waymo and return them to the company or the court by May 31 at 12:00 p.m.
   In addition, Uber must provide Waymo and the court with a log of all communications in which Levandowski mentioned LiDAR to any officer, director, employee, agent, supplier, consultant or defendant by June 23 at 12:00 p.m.
   In an email obtained by Business Insider last month, Levandowski had already said he would no longer be working on tasks related to LiDAR, but that his other responsibilities would not change.
   “We are pleased with the court’s ruling that Uber can continue building and utilizing all of its self-driving technology, including our innovation around LIDAR,” an Uber spokesperson told CNBC on Monday. “We look forward to moving toward trial and continuing to demonstrate that our technology has been built independently from the ground up.”