A redaction error in court documents shows that Uber’s head of autonomous vehicles might not have been acting alone.
The plot thickens in the high-profile lawsuit between Waymo and Uber over self-driving car technology.
A second Uber executive has been revealed in Waymo’s lawsuit.
When Waymo, the self-driving car unit of Google parent company, Alphabet, first filed its suit in February only one senior Uber executive was named — Anthony Levandowski. Court documents made public on Monday show that another Uber executive, Lior Ron, was also allegedly involved.
This legal battle — pitting two of Silicon Valley’s most-watched companies against each other — centers on Waymo’s claims that Uber allegedly stole secret self-driving car technology.
Both Levandowski and Ron previously worked at Google but they left to form the self-driving truck company Otto, which launched May 2016 and then was acquired by Uber for $680 million in August. Levandowski is now Uber’s head of autonomous vehicles and Ron’s lists his current position on LinkedIn as «co-founder at Otto. »
Waymo claims that when Levandowski left he allegedly downloaded 14,000 «highly confidential» files to a hard drive.
