- Waymo accused Uber and Otto, acquired by the ride services company in August, with stealing confidential information on Waymo's Lidar sensor
- Seeking unspecified amount of damages and preventing Uber from using tech
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Google parent Alphabet's Waymo self-driving car unit has sued Uber and its autonomous trucking subsidiary Otto, claiming over 14,000 documents relating to its self driving car sensors were stolen by a former executive.
Waymo accused Uber and Otto, acquired by the ride services company in August, with stealing confidential information on Waymo's Lidar sensor technology to help speed its own efforts in autonomous technology.
The 28-page complaint accuses Anthony Levandowski, a former top manager for Google's self-driving car project, of stealing pivotal technology now propelling Uber's effort to assemble a fleet of autonomous vehicles for its ride-hailing service.
The sensors act as the cars 'eyes', allowing it to constantly scan its surroundings.
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Anthony Levandowski, head of Uber's self-driving program, speaks about their driverless car in San Francisco. A self-driving car company founded by Google is accusing a former top engineer of stealing pivotal technology that is propelling Uber's effort to assemble a fleet of automated vehicles for its popular ride-hailing service. The complaint cites evidence that Levandowski, a former manager in Google's self-driving car project, loaded 14,000 confidential files on a laptop before leaving to start his own company in 2016.
The alleged chicanery occurred in late 2015, before Levandowski left to found a startup called Otto that is building big-rig trucks that navigate highways without a human behind the wheel.
Uber bought Otto for $680 million last year, and Levandowski is now overseeing Uber's effort to develop and dispatch cars driven by robots.
'While Waymo developed its custom LiDAR systems with sustained effort over many years, defendants leveraged stolen information to shortcut the process and purportedly build a comparable LiDAR system in only nine months,' the complaint in the Northern District of California said.
Waymo is seeking an unspecified amount of damages and a court order preventing Uber from using its proprietary information.
Uber says the lawsuit is a 'baseless attempt to slow down a competitor.'
'We are incredibly proud of the progress that our team has made,' an Uber spokesperson said in a statement.
'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.'
Otto launched with much fanfare in May, due in part to the high profile of one of its co-founders, Anthony Levandowski, who had been an executive on Google's self-driving project.
Uber acquired the company in August for what Waymo said in the lawsuit w as $680 million.
Waymo accused Uber and Otto, acquired by the ride services company in August, with stealing confidential information on Waymo's Lidar sensor technology to speed its own efforts.
Waymo said that before Levandowski's resignation in January 2016 from Google, whose self-driving unit was renamed Waymo in December, he downloaded over 14,000 confidential files, including Lidar circuit board designs.
Lidar is a main component of autonomous driving systems that bounces light pulses off objects to help vehicles know where they are on the road.
Otto launched with much fanfare in May, due in part to the high profile of one of its co-founders, Anthony Levandowski, who had been an executive on Google's self-driving project. Uber acquired the company in August for what Waymo said in the lawsuit was $680 million.
Waymo accused Levandowski of attempting to 'erase any forensic fingerprints' via a reformat of his laptop.
'The Replicate d Board reflects Waymo's highly confidential proprietary LiDAR technology and Waymo trade secrets,' the complaint reads.
'Moreover, the Replicated Board is specifically designed to be used in conjunction with many other Waymo trade secrets and in the context of overall LiDAR systems covered by Waymo patents.'
To then verify its suspicions, Waymo filed a public records request to the Nevada Governor's Office of Economic Development and Department of Motor Vehicles in February for Otto's communications with the departments.
In that correspondence, Otto indicated that the company was using custom lidar that it built in-house.
Waymo cites this as evidence that Uber and Otto are using a circuit board that 'bears a striking resemblance' to Waymo's, according to Recode.
Earlier this month it was claimed Google paid some of its early-staffers 'supersized payouts' in order to keep them from leaving the firm's autonomous car division, a new report has found.
However, it seems the multimillion dollar pay checks backfired and gave them the means to move on – many stated they 'didn't need the job security anymore,' according to Bloomberg.
In self driving cars, the sensors, seen on the top of the car, constantly scan the surrounding areas looking for information and acting as the 'eyes' of the car.
These employees had an 'unusual compensation system' that was based on the performance of the project, which some referred to it as 'F-you money'.
The self-driving car project, which is now called Waymo, has since adopted a more uniform pay structure that is fair to all of its employees, a person familiar with the matter told Alistair Barr and Mark Bergen with Bloomberg.
But prior to the shift, a top executive at partner Alphabet Inc highlighted how costly the original program was.
It may have been necessary for Google to dish out the cash in the beginning, as the the firm had just started the project and had hopes to one-day turn it into a full-fledged business.
And in order to accomplish this, Google would need the most talented people working for them.
The unusual compensation system began shortly after the tech giant unveiled its first self-driving car in 2010.
It was designed in a fashion that based paychecks on how well the project was performing, rather than how much money it was making.
Besides being handed cash salaries, some employees were also awarded bonuses and given equity in the business.
'After several years, Google applied a multiplier to the value of the awards and paid some or all of it out,' explained Bloomberg.
Many of the engineers and other staff members began leaving the car division in 2016. Some were frustrated with the pace of progress and others left to start their own self-driving car company, people familiar with the matter said
'The multiplier was based on periodic valuations of the division, the people said.'
'The precise metrics that the division was measured by-- and caused the bonuses to balloon-- are not known.'
However, a large multiplier was recently added to the compensation packages in late 2015, according to people familiar with the situation.
Google CFO Ruth Porat (pictured) said the was a 14 percent increase, a total of $6.6bn, in operating expenses in Q4 2015
Two years ago, the vehicles logged more than one million autonomous miles – and other firms like Toyota and Tesla had just announced their plans for self-driving systems.
A source told Bloomberg that one of the employees had a multiplier of 16 applied to bonuses and equity over a four year period.
The grand total of payouts has not been made public, but Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat discussed the costs during an earnings conference call with analysts early last year.
There was a 14 percent increase, a total of $6.6 billion, in operating expenses in the fourth quarter of 2015, 'primarily driven by R&D expense, particularly affected by expenses resulting from project milestones in Other Bets established several years ago,' Porat said, according to a transcript.
Although this is still not a clear answer, a source familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that the comments were about the car project compensation.
Many of the engineers and other staff members began leaving the car division in 2016.
Some were frustrated with the pace of progress and were worried about how the new leader, John Krafcick, would handle the group.
And others left to start their own self-driving car company, people familiar with the matter said.
The big payouts made the situation worse, as team members had less financial incentive to stay, the people familiar with the situation said.
Chris Urmson, previous leader of the project, departed in August and is working on a startup.
Another early staffer, Brian Salesky, who was a former Google car executive, left the project to form Otto, a self-driving car company that was snagged by Uber.
Salesky also started Argo AI, which recently received a $1 billion investment from Ford.
