The biggest showdown for driverless cars is coming between Uber and Waymo, a company owned by Google. Billions of dollars have been invested into the technology that will be put to the test tomorrow, February 5th, in San Francisco.
This showdown is more than showboating the two companies’ technologies, but the latest addition to the Uber vs. Google legal battle. Waymo claims that Uber robbed their car design secrets when they bought the autonomous truck company, Otto. This company was founded by former Google engineer, Anthony Lewandowski, which used similar technologies to Google’s Waymo. Google believes that Uber only bought Otto because they knew they could access confidential information through Mr. Lewandowski. Before leaving Google, Lewandowski downloaded 14,000 imperative files which endangered 8 patents. Uber ended up firing Lewandowski, probably after they got the information that they needed.
The stakes are very high for intellectual property law, and we will see who takes the edge in the feud on Monday.
Sources:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/battle-of-the-bots-uber-and-waymo-gear-up-for-driverless-car-trial-1517670000
https://d3r76jz8za3nz.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Waymo-vs-Uber.jpg
The case of Uber vs Waymo is looking rather complicated. Both sides obviously have a lot at stake here. There were a lot of shady looking text messages sent by employees at Uber, but those can be explained with other contexts, and only the people who sent them actually know the truth.
Also, accused Uber of stealing trade secrets complicates things for tech company employees. They may fear leaving their job to work for another company in the future out of a fear of causing a lawsuit over trade secrets. This makes for an interesting case. However, it is hard to tell who will come out on top especially considering a lot of the detailed hearings are not open to the public as a result of the fact that Waymo still wants to protect those secrets that they claim were stolen by Uber.
https://www.wired.com/story/uber-waymo-self-driving-trial-day-3-kalanick/