Waymo, Google’s self-driving car division, has filed a lawsuit that claims a former engineer and current executive at Uber stole 14,000 confidential documents that were used to build Uber’s self-driving vehicles.
The suit specifically points to Anthony Levandowski, who was influential in Google’s self-driving car efforts and later left the company to co-found Otto, a self-driving truck venture that sold to Uber for $680 million.
The petition says, “Fair competition spurs new technical innovation, but what has happened here is not fair competition. Instead, 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. 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.”
Uber has called the lawsuit “baseless.”
In a statement, an Uber spokesperson said, “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.”
The suit specifically points to Anthony Levandowski, who was influential in Google’s self-driving car efforts and later left the company to co-found Otto, a self-driving truck venture that sold to Uber for $680 million.
The petition says, “Fair competition spurs new technical innovation, but what has happened here is not fair competition. Instead, 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. 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.”
Uber has called the lawsuit “baseless.”
In a statement, an Uber spokesperson said, “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.”
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