Hacker News Reader

Comment by xfour | Hacker News Reader

I have a hard time believing the term sheet says something to the effect of, for $680 million we would like to purchase all your stolen documents please.

The article is more about the due diligence reports where it might out that Uber knew that there was stolen documents, which Uber seems keen on keeping out of Waymo's hands.

View on HN

If Uber knew about the stolen documents, then presumably they would be super careful not to put anything about them in writing.

I assume the whole lot to be verbal promises between friends and printouts of documents which can later be "lost" leaving no trace.

Uber isn't stupid - if they're doing something wrong, and suspect later litigation, they aren't going to let anyone write about it.

You'd think so, but Uber has also been pinged by a Judge for handing over email which, among other things, says to "use encrypted email or chat", specifically "to avoid discovery issues":

* https://theintercept.com/2016/07/29/federal-judge-rips-uber-...

* https://prod01-cdn07.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/20...

Or in other words, the intersection of people who make excellent criminals and people who engage in criminal activity (as opposed to putting those skills to other uses) is pretty small.

And even if you're in that category, chances are at least one of your work colleagues is not.

That's honestly "common". I've seen it a number of times emails along the line of "let's not talk about this via email but let's discuss it only over the phone" - in many other companies/situations.

Sure. In the context of an already-filed lawsuit, however, that's asking for trouble. The other side has the legal right to discover relevant documents that you hold; deliberately trying to make that harder during a court case is arguably unethical, and is certainly frowned on by judges.

I agree; I think the "you steal the documents, we'll buy your fake company" agreements did take place, but they were all conducted verbally and so we're never going to see a smoking gun. But this will help establish that Uber knew or should've known that Levandowski had the stuff, at which point they will be hard-pressed to come up with an alternate explanation as to why they went ahead with the deal.

Presuming you're right, then Uber's due diligence report should have been very carefully tailored. They wouldn't want it to look like they hadn't done their due diligence if all this came out, but they also wouldn't want it to look like they knew. It should be a masterpiece of tapdancing. I look forward to the fallout from Waymo getting to read it.

My understanding is that the due diligence report was by an independent company that does such reports as part of its regular business, and so was motivated to make it honest.

Also, if the due diligence report said there was nothing suspicious about the deal, then why is Uber going to such truly extraordinary lengths to try to keep Waymo from seeing it?

Term sheets are prepared by an army of lawyers (from both sides). When negotiating a term sheet, the term sheet goes back and forth a dozen times - redacting and adapting each single comma of the draft. I agree, I doubt that somewhere there will be a "Uber agrees to buy stolen IPs". Lawyers would have killed anything smaller than that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com