Alphabet sues Uber over Waymo’s self-driving auto tech

Waymo Inc., which began its life as Google Inc.’s self-driving auto division, today filed a lawsuit against Uber Technologies Inc. claiming that the ride-hailing service stole some of its autonomous vehicle technology. Waymo says that Uber “misappropriated” its trade secrets, and infringed upon its held patents.

Levandowski did not immediately return a request from C/D for comment Thursday.

Google’s parent company Alphabet released the following in an official statement: “Otto and Uber have taken Waymo’s intellectual property so that they could avoid incurring the risk, time and expense of independently developing their own technology”.

Alphabet’s self-driving auto unit, Waymo, is suing Uber over claims that a former software engineer stole trade secrets from Waymo to develop Uber’s laser-based radar system for autonomous vehicles.

He left to start a self-driving truck startup named Otto, which was later acquired by Uber. The company says this employee is Anthony Levandowski. The configuration and specifications of our LiDAR sensors are unique to Waymo.

Furthermore, Waymo alleges that Levandowski and other former employees now at either Otto or Uber downloaded highly confidential information weeks before resigning. “After that, he connected an external drive to the laptop”.

The lawsuit puts both companies in an awkward position as Google Ventures, another Alphabet subsidiary, is also an Uber investor. Even more damning is the allegation that several former Waymo employees at Otto and Uber took additional confidential information.

Waymo said it discovered the resemblance when a supplier inadvertently emailed a blueprint of the circuit board for Uber’s radar system. Uber acquired the company in August for what Waymo said in the lawsuit was $680 million. While Waymo said in its complaint that the Replicated Board design reflects Waymo’s proprietary Lidar technology, “The Replicated Board is specifically created to be used in conjunction with many other Waymo trade secrets and in the context of overall LiDAR systems covered by Waymo patents“, said the complaint. Waymo also added that over the years, its engineers worked on improving the reliability and performance of the LiDAR system while driving the costs down.

As the battle to bring self-driving vehicle technology into the mainstream intensifies, it’s no surprise that we’re starting to see a discernible increase in the number of intra-industry lawsuits.