The Uber-Waymo trial which has been in the making for almost a year officially started on Monday February 5th. Waymo’s lawsuit is accusing Uber of stealing their driverless car technology.
Allegedly former Google self-driving engineer Anthony Levandowsk stole thousands of documents. After “Levandowski left Google, he founded Otto, a self-driving truck startup, which was quickly acquired by Uber… Waymo’s lawyers have argued that Uber wound up with those allegedly stolen files and merely masqueraded the process as an acquisition”.
Many believe that this case should have never made it this far, but this case is slightly different. An Uber employee “accidentally CC’d Waymo on an email from one of its self-driving tech vendors. The email contained a drawing of a circuit board that looked suspiciously like one of Waymo’s designs”. That mistake has been costly and been the catalyst in this multibillion-dollar lawsuit. “It was recently reported that Waymo sought $1.4 billion and a public apology from Uber”, but the company rejected the offer.
This lawsuit is monumental since it is putting two major tech players against each other in court. In addition this is the first big legal battle dealing with self-driving cars.
Source:
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/5/16955312/uber-waymo-trial-self-driving-cars-preview
Judge delays Waymo/Uber trial until December 4th
Stealing another company’s idea or plan is a big deal, and it becomes even bigger when it involves two major businesses. Self-driving cars are a hot topic nowadays, and almost every car company wants to get a head start in the industry, which is presumably why Uber allegedly stole designs from Waymo. The goal is not to create something similar to other companies, but to create something better and improved. I don’t understand why Uber would even try to steal designs when they really need to come up with their own concept that is even better than other companies. They had to know that they would get caught too. So, if Uber can’t realize that it’s illegal to steal, then they’re not capable of being a top business unless they come up with something original and something that is useful.
Travis Kalanick, the ex-CEO of Uber, testified during the trial. He claims that Anthony Levandowski was set on starting a company and that Uber really wanted to hire him. It’s an interesting situation because Uber did not steal directly from Waymo, but instead they hired Levandowski, who previously worked for Google and had the information. This hasn’t been the best of years for Uber either as they were also hit with accusations of harboring a toxic environment for women. Uber used to have a solid reputation, but it appears these allegations are diminishing it. Who knows what the taxi-like service company will do next.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/02/06/uber-ex-ceo-kalanick-defends-deal-heart-lawsuit-google/311211002/
I would certainly be interested in seeing how this trial turns out. There would have to be a lot of back and forth since it is the first time something for self driving cars has shown up in the court room. There wouldn’t be any type of previous cases to use as a base to go off of. I feel there also could be a lot of difficulty deciding who owns the rights to the information since it was a drawing or idea of a circuit and not the actual product itself.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/02/04/self-driving-cars-uber-faces-waymo-trial-over-race-remove-driver/300918002/