MOUNTAIN VIEW and SAN FRANCISCO, CA – As tech giants throughout the globe look to self-driving technology as the next consumer and supplier craze, it looks as though there may be a brief hiccup on the way to success with qualms over the tech. Waymo, a company owned by Google’s parent Alphabet, has filed a lawsuit against Uber over the rights to its self-driving technology.
Denying this claim, a spokesperson for Uber, according to Business Insider, stated "We are incredibly proud of the progress that our team has made. We have reviewed Waymo's claims and determined them to be a baseless attempt to slow down a competitor and we look forward to vigorously defending against them in court. In the meantime, we will continue our hard work to bring self-driving benefits to the world."
Waymo, a company formed from Google’s self-driving research, filed the lawsuit after alleging that a former employee stole some of its technology. Waymo stated that it has evidence Uber is using its stolen system to develop its own light detection and ranging (lidar) technology.
According to Business Insider, former Waymo employee Anthony Levandowski was named as taking 14,000 files from a Waymo laptop that related to the development of a proprietary lidar system. Levandowski then left Waymo to start Otto, a self-driving company, and then began working for Uber after the company bought out his own.
“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,” Waymo said in the filing. “Ultimately, this calculated theft reportedly netted Otto employees over half a billion dollars and allowed Uber to revive a stalled program, all at Waymo’s expense.”
Waymo indicated in its filing, according to The New York Times, that it discovered the grounds for a lawsuit after being inadvertently copied on an email from a supplier. The email contained drawings of Uber’s circuit board design for lidar technology which Waymo alleges bear “a striking resemblance” to its own patented design.
Waymo also stated that a number of Google employees left to join Levandowski at Otto, and downloaded more trade secrets before their departure which included supplier lists, manufacturing details, and technical information.
Will this lawsuit waylay the presence of self-driving cars and transportation on the streets? AndNowUKnow will keep you up-to-date with the latest.
