Uber “likely knew or at least should have known” that its head of self-driving car technology had stolen trade secrets from Waymo, a federal judge ruled in an order made public Monday.
SAN FRANCISCO — Highlighting the strength of Waymo’s case in a high-stakes trade secrets battle against rival Uber, a federal judge has ordered the ride-hailing company to bar a top engineer from working on key self-driving car technology.
Uber also must use the “full extent” of its authority to prevent the engineer — Anthony Levandowski — and all other employees from using material downloaded from Waymo, and force them to return those documents by May 31.
The evidence indicates that “Uber likely knew or at least should have known that Levandowski had taken and retained possession of Waymo’s confidential files, ” U. S. District Judge William Alsup wrote in an order made public Monday. “Waymo has also sufficiently shown, for purposes of the instant motion only, that the 14,000-plus purloined files likely contain at least some trade secrets, and that some provisional relief is warranted while this case progresses toward trial.”
The order is a blow to Uber as it fights to keep its crucial self-driving car program alive in the face of allegations that it stole Waymo’s designs for the Lidar sensors that help autonomous vehicles navigate the road. Levandowski, the former Waymo engineer at the heart of the case, already has stepped down from his role as head of Uber’s self-driving car program, but Waymo had argued that wasn’ t good enough and demanded an order forcing him out. Waymo also sought an order prohibiting Uber from using anything that could be a Waymo trade secret — a potentially deadly blow to Uber’s autonomous vehicle efforts.
Monday’s ruling is temporary, and is intended only to offer relief to Waymo while the case proceeds to a scheduled October trial. And the order wasn’ t a total win for Waymo.
“Not all of Waymo’s 121 asserted trade secrets actually qualify as such, ” Alsup wrote, “and few have been traced into the accused technology. Waymo’s patent infringement accusations on this motion also proved meritless.”
Waymo cheered the order Monday.
“Competition should be fueled by innovation in the labs and on the roads, not through unlawful actions, ” a company spokesman wrote in an emailed statement. “We welcome the order to prohibit Uber’s use of stolen documents containing trade secrets developed by Waymo through years of research, and to formally bar Mr. Levandowski from working on the technology. The court has also granted Waymo expedited discovery and we will use this to further protect our work and hold Uber fully responsible for its misconduct.”
But Uber didn’ t show any intention of giving up the fight.
“We are pleased with the court’s ruling that Uber can continue building and utilizing all of its self-driving technology, including our innovation around LiDAR, ” an Uber spokeswoman wrote in an emailed statement. “We look forward to moving toward trial and continuing to demonstrate that our technology has been built independently from the ground up.”
