Trade secrets involving autonomous-vehicle technologies are at the heart of a blockbuster dispute between two of Silicon Valley’s most influential companies.
In a lawsuit filed Thursday, Waymo, the company formerly known as Google’s self-driving-car project, alleges that a former employee who now heads Uber’s autonomous-driving unit downloaded more than 14,000 “highly confidential and proprietary” files before leaving to start his own company in 2015.
Six weeks before he resigned, Waymo accuses, Anthony Levandowski allegedly took “extraordinary efforts to raid Waymo’s design server and then conceal his activities,” according to the lawsuit, filed against Uber Technologies and its subsidiary, Otto, in U.S. District Court on Thursday. Waymo says the download of documents amounts to the theft of critical trade secrets and is a violation of federal laws that protect the company, which is seeking monetary damages.
“Our parent company, Alphabet, has long worked with Uber in many areas, and we didn’t make this decision lightly,” Waymo wrote in a statement posted to Medium. “However, given the overwhelming facts that our technology has been stolen, we have no choice but to defend our investment and development of this unique technology.”
A new lidar unit attached to one of Uber’s self-driving vehicles.
Levandowski did not immediately return a request from C/D for comment Thursday. But the stakes are high for both companies. An unfavorable outcome for Uber or Otto in the court proceedings could cripple the company and its trucking subsidiary. Self-driving technology is considered a critical part of the ride-hailing service’s long-term strategy to reach profitability.
Levandowski worked as a manager in what was then the Google self-driving-car project before leaving to start his own self-driving-truck company, Otto, in January 2016. Uber purchased Otto for $680 million in August 2016, at which time Levandowski took control of both Uber’s and Otto’s autonomous-driving developments.
A linchpin of the lawsuit is the allegation that Levandowski took proprietary knowledge of systems involving lidar, the laser-based scanning sensor, which most car companies consider an essential component for helping self-driving vehicles understand their surroundings and navigate their travels.
Waymo says it was tipped off to the alleged theft when its employees were inadvertently copied on an email from a component supplier for its lidar systems. The email contained machine drawings of an Uber lidar circuit board.
“This circuit board bears a striking resemblance to Waymo’s own highly confidential and proprietary design and reflects Waymo trade secrets,” the court filing says.
Waymo says the 14,000 files downloaded by Levandowski represent approximately 9.7 GB of data. Company executives say he downloaded the files onto a laptop to which he had attached an external hard drive. The lawsuit then says he installed a new operating system on the laptop in an attempt to “erase any forensic fingerprints.”
In a statement issued Thursday evening, an Uber spokesperson said, “We take the allegations made against Otto and Uber employees seriously and we will review this matter carefully.”
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