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Comment by eddieplan9 | Hacker News Reader

The title screams bias and misinformation. It presumes Uber took technology from Waymo, which the judge rules against by stating that "Waymo’s patent theories are too weak to support any provisional relief" and "it has become clear that Waymo has both overreached in defining its trade secrets and made moving targets out of its asserted trade secrets to evade defensive arguments".

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Contrary, it says that Uber either knew or should have known that he took those 14,000 files and that undoubtedly those files were used by Uber to develop LIDAR. It says that Waymo has shown evidence of trade secret misuse enough to grant provisional relief.

It is not a knock out blow against Uber, but look at the relief granted with regard to more discover. Uber has to do a complete accounting of everyone who talked to Lewandowsky about LIDAR and the contents and dates of those conversations. They have to get every employee under oath saying whether they used any info or knew of any info in those 14,000 files.

In short, Uber didn't get knocked out by this order, but it certainly sets them up for getting knocked out as the Judge clearly is interested in getting to the bottom of this.

If evidence exists that Uber knew of or used information in those 14,000 files ... the Judge and Waymo are determined to find it. I think that is bad for Uber know matter how you look at it.

I'm interpreting this differently than you are.

It says nothing about trade secret _misuse_ but alsip does discuss trade secret theft, which is an important distinction. So far, there is no evidence that Uber has used any waymo trade secrets in their SDC program, and if there was any evidence the program would have been shut down BUT there is significant evidence that Levandowsky did steal a treasure trove of documents as he was on his way out the door.

What the ruling does show is that Levandowsky is considered to be toxic, and will not be allowed to work at uber on any programs that he may have stolen trade secrets for.

It is entirely possible that Levandowsky downloaded the 14k files for his use, but they never impacted the designs at uber, at least in a legally provable form.

I am not familiar enough with case law in this arena to know the legal intricacies but my initial reaction is that, while uber is not off the hook, the potential damage they may receive as an outcome of this has has been reduced immensely (shut down entire program => remove head exec running program) when compared with the rhetoric before this injunction was released.

In the expedited discovery done so far Uber has claimed privilege for huge amounts of requested documents. If you read the order, the Judge is signaling that this isn't going to be allowed to continue. One of the reasons he turned down the adverse inference is basically that he expects discovery going forward to favor Waymo and the adverse inference question is not necessary to decide now.

The ruling in general gives the definite impression that the Judge is very interested in seeing the evidence one way or another whether stolen tech was used by Uber and claims of privilege and 5th amendment will be greatly hindered going forward.

Are you an Uber employee? Curious for full disclosure.

I'm an Alphabet employee but not one working on Waymo-related projects, nor am I a lawyer who feels qualified to comment on this situation. Wish Groklaw was still around to interpret these rulings for us :(.

What a strange thing to ask for a completely normal comment. Like it's unthinkable that someone other than an Uber employee would say it.

>>It presumes Uber took technology from Waymo, which the judge rules against

FTFA:

"Judge William Alsup in San Francisco says in the ruling that Waymo has shown “compelling evidence” that a former star engineer named Anthony Levandowski downloaded confidential files before leaving Waymo. The Judge also says evidence shows that before he left Waymo, Levandowski and Uber planned for Uber to acquire a company formed by Levandowski."

And you can reasonably draw the conclusion that is a plot for stealing technology? It's perfectly reasonable to tell someone that, go make an MVP and we will acquire it.

> It's perfectly reasonable to tell someone that, go make an MVP and we will acquire it.

You have a point in general, but it is some of specifics of this case that raise doubts about whether that is the whole story.

That isn't quite the same as "Uber took technology from Waymo", though.

Levandowski took a bunch of stuff from Waymo. There seems to be very little doubt of that. Levandowski, while in possession of those documents, formed Otto. Uber bought Otto. Therefore, Uber bought a company that included a person who stole a bunch of documents from Waymo.

Now: Did Uber get access to the documents? Did Levandowski not show them the documents, but just use the contents to give guidance/instructions/knowledge? Either of those would be "Uber taking the technology".

Or did Levandowski just put those files away on a drive somewhere, and never use them while at Otto or Uber? I don't believe that for a minute, but it's possible (from the evidence so far).

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