Coverage: There is a rift among the driverless car companies

Waymo, the driverless car unit of Google parent Alphabet, on Thursday dropped a bombshell by filing a suit against Uber and its Otto self-driving tech unit in federal court in San Francisco, claiming the ride-hailing giant stole patents and trade secrets.

Alan Ohnsman of Forbes had the news:

The Mountain View, California-based company’s claims center on actions by Anthony Levandowski, a long-time member of Google’s driverless car team who left to found Otto in 2016. Uber in August reportedly paid as much as $680 million for the nascent company which focused on designing self-driving systems for commercial trucks. When the deal was announced, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick described Levandowski as “one of the world’s leading autonomous engineers.”

According to the suit, Levandowski, who runs Uber’s automated vehicle research team, downloaded data while still working for Google related to the company’s laser LiDAR technology, a high-definition sensor that gives self-driving vehicles 360-degree vision. The company learned of this after a supplier to Waymo sent it images of a LiDAR circuit board, presumably from Uber, that resembled its own.

Six weeks before his resignation, Waymo claims that Levandowski “downloaded over 14,000 highly confidential and proprietary design files for Waymo’s various hardware systems, including designs of Waymo’s LiDAR and circuit board,” the company said in a blog post that summarizes actions detailed in the lawsuit and which doesn’t personally name Levandowski as a defendant.

Daisuke Wakabayashi and Mike Isaac of The New York Times report that an inadvertent email led to the lawsuit:

In its filing, Waymo said it was inadvertently copied on an email from one of its suppliers with drawings of Uber’s circuit board design for its lidar technology, short for light detection and ranging, ” that are laser-based sensors used in self-driving cars. Waymo said Uber’s design bore “a striking resemblance” to its proprietary and highly secret design and infringed on Waymo’s patents.

Waymo also said that a number of Google employees, who subsequently left to join Mr. Levandowski at Google, downloaded additional trade secrets before departing. These included supplier lists, manufacturing details and technical information, Waymo said.

The suit accuses Uber of stealing trade secrets, infringing on patents and competing unfairly in an effort to catch up on autonomous vehicle technology.

Otto was the brainchild of a handful of former Google employees who pioneered autonomous vehicle research at the search giant. Mr. Levandowski, who had been at Google nine years, led that effort.

Julia Carrie Wong and Olivia Solon of The Guardian report that Waymo has gone to great lengths to protect the technology:

The suit details the lengths Waymo goes to in order to protect secrets, including purchasing LiDAR components from numerous vendors and completing assembly in-house to prevent any single vendor from knowing everything about the technology.

Waymo discovered further evidence of wrongdoing through a public records request in Nevada, where Otto had submitted documents to regulatory agencies. The documents, which included a description of Otto’s LiDAR system, were “the final piece of the puzzle”, the suit states.

“Defendants’ conduct constitutes transgressions of a continuing nature for which Waymo has no adequate remedy at law,” the suit states.

Mark Terry, an intellectual property lawyer, said that leaving a company with skills and knowledge is permissible, but taking documents is another matter. “If it’s true he did these things it’s pretty egregious.”