Most Waymo Patent Claims Dropped in Autonomous Car Fight with Uber | Hacker News Reader

Most Waymo Patent Claims Dropped in Autonomous Car Fight with Uber

bloomberg.com

162 pointspfarnsworth107 comments

Title feels a little clickbaity, as it was a request from the Judge prior to going to a Jury:

  U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco has asked 
  Waymo to narrow its more than 100 trade secrets claims to 
  fewer than 10 to put in front of a jury.

Reformatted for mobile users:

U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco has asked Waymo to narrow its more than 100 trade secrets claims to fewer than 10 to put in front of a jury.

@dang/HN team: Considering how often snippets are used on HN, is there another way to format those on mobile?

Thanks for all you do!

The solution is for users to not use monospaced, pre-formatted text for things other than code snippets.

I think monospaced should be like

``` monospaced ```

And the four-space/tab indentation should denote

    a quote

But that's just me.

I'm a fan of > for quotes, plus it's less likely to have people used to four spaces for code suddenly getting quotes instead

If users have to work around server errors, it's not a solution.

It's not a server error, it's a user error. Stop using monospace for things that don't need it.

totally. My first thoughts while reading the title was "oh now that's a 90 degree turn, patents are bogus". Turn out the title is... oh well, this is kind of a fake news, it's everywhere, even on HN. What a wonderful world

edit: the title has been edited since.

Uber's response to it is even more baffling!

"Waymo’s retreat on three of their four patent claims is yet another sign that they have overpromised and can’t deliver," Uber said in a statement. "Not only have they uncovered zero evidence of any of the 14,000 files in question coming to Uber, they now admit that Uber’s LiDAR design is actually very different than theirs. Faced with this hard truth, Waymo has resorted to floating conspiracy theories not rooted in fact, doing everything they can to put the focus on sensation rather than substance."

Is it baffling? They're doing what they can to influence the public (and jury, as impartial as they will try to make it).

It is baffling because it does a poor job at influencing. Frankly it sounds kinda unprofessional and "Uberish".

I think it's because you know significantly more about the legal battle than the average person. Now, a jury may not be convinced by this stunt, that I'll give.

Uber's legal team has done this a couple times recently - really strong tones for things.

Both legal teams have done it. It's what lawyers do, especially in a case playing out so publicly.

What is "it", and could you give an example of Google's legal team doing "it?"

Here's an articles that cites statements where they are both doing "it":

https://www.recode.net/2017/6/28/15891136/alphabet-alleges-u...

"It" are allegations and statements that very liberally interpret convenient facts, ignore inconvenient facts and inject conjecture to support the narrative they want the public to believe. I'm shocked that anyone would think lawyers for only one side would do that. It's all heresay, allegations, conjecture and bullshit by lawyers all sides until evidence is presented in a court of law and a judgement has been made. And even then the judgement may be wrong for all sorts of reasons.

FWIW, Recode is one of the few places covering the case fairly equitably (probably because it's run by one of the few journalists in Silicon Valley with any scruples and minimal conflicts of interest, Kara Swisher).

I'm surprised to hear Kara Swisher described like that. I feel like most of her writing is near tabloid gossip quality, and she seems to have an unhealthy obsession with trashing Yahoo/Marissa Mayer. I did work there for a while, so I'm certainly biased, but I've never seen a journalist so intent on badmouthing a single company/CEO with such wild speculation and over-dramatized commentary. She did seem to have a good source so maybe she was milking that but it went way beyond reporting the facts.

She's certainly not perfect. She obviously has her own biases, but they seem more personal and certainly aren't blatant conflicts of interest like most of the other tech journalists that have taken money from VCs do. Many of the others do not bite the hands that feed them. They make sure to cover investments of their investors positively and competitors of the investments of their investors negatively. It's all so horribly incestuous.

Kara Swisher's main career was been publishing leaked Silicon Valley documents (including Google's) while being married to a Google Vice President. (They are now separated and the VP is no longer at Google)

Many said similar things about Trump's rhetoric a year ago, yet here we are.

It could be Trump rhetoric, if it were a little less coherent and drew from a smaller vocabulary.

I might have agreed that this type of rhetoric does a poor job at influencing about a year ago. Unfortunately, as this past US presidential election has show, it seems to be pretty effective.

Yes because this kind of rhetoric was never used effectively before /s

I just didn't have a glaring example of its effectiveness to point to before :/.

They understand most people aren't paying attention.

mmanfrin quotes a bit about trade secret claims. You're quoting something about patent claims. That should help de-baffle it.

No harshness intended. This is complicated stuff, no sarcasm.

This is straight up Donald Trump.

The relevant quote from the judge is:

    I want to reiterate to the plaintiff here that you should think a lot
    about just dropping the patent part of this case.

My understanding is that there are two parts to this suit: patent infringement and trade secrets. You can't patent a trade secret (then it wouldn't be secret), so these are two independent things.

Alsup was suggesting Waymo to drop the patent portion of their suit and focus solely on the trade secret portion of their case. The trade secrets were pared down as mentioned in that snippet, but that's in addition to dropping 3 of the 4 patent infringement claims.

Note that the reason he told them to drop the trade secret claims is because they're kind of ridiculous:

> the judge scolded Waymo for being "overbroad" in what it says are 121 trade secrets involved in the case. For example, Alsup wrote that Waymo can't claim that the way it positions light sources in its Lidar is protected, since the design uses well-known principles of physics.

Google is going to increase or fully acquire Uber. Uber has virtually no management in place right now and I could hypothetically see that clearing being pragmatic for the social reasons, but potentially part of a deal with Google for business ones. Maybe they will reach a settlement before this goes to court. This is obviously unfounded speculation but a few other points

whole C suite is pretty much gone

Uber is integrated into Gmaps. Currently running an existing user promo for $15 if executed through maps.

Whole Uber team has apparently trained on Googles tech already so on boarding will be easier

It's Googles core competency

They already own a smallish percentage

They seem to be focused on production, key exec was let go from Ford for wrecking a Frenemy partnership trade of AI / Tech for Ford production expertise. They have the synergy with Gmaps, much of the AI and prototyping with Waymo and they can turn around the negative sentiment. They need the network short term to ramp up whatever their play is for the future.

I can see this being reasonable. Uber is a financial mess with limited upside if this case goes south and is only attractive to a few buyers. Google, already being an investor is one of they few Incs with the knowledge and capital to actually get value from this cash fire.

Doesn't waymo already have a deal to supply self driving cars to lyft? What would they get from Uber but a competing service?

The brand seems like a liability in this case.

Hell, if anything, i'd use this to force Uber to license the cars from Waymo, too.

They would drop lyft.

>The brand seems like a liability in this case.

Cheaper to buy.

You guys are funny.

With much of the sexual impropriety stories at Uber, is it really a good PR move for Google to go ahead with such acquisition?

> With much of the sexual impropriety stories at Uber, is it really a good PR move for Google to go ahead with such acquisition?

Maybe; the problem is an HR/management one, which an acquisition in which upper management and HR are largely replaced and lower management is scrutinized under a microscope could probably resolve quickly to prevent any ongoing issues, and not keeping the Uber name in use would deal with most of the public image issues.

It's not just a problem of upper management and HR. It sounds to me like a rotten culture from the bottom up. This is not the case at Alphabet (so far as I know), so what happens when a clash of cultures hits? Usually, people that can't adapt are fired or marginalized until replaced. In such a case, is the purchase of Uber worth it or necessary?

> In such a case, is the purchase of Uber worth it or necessary?

The platform and existing customer and (at least in the transitional phase) driver relationships are not without value, and there's probably IP value as well (and, if they've really built on stuff stolen from or encumbered I by patents owned by Google, it's potentially uniquely valuable to Google, compared to other buyers.)

So, I mean, even an “acquifire” where none of the actual people employed by Uber are retained might be worthwhile, at the right price.

> It sounds to me like a rotten culture from the bottom up.

Anecdote, but the one engineer I know that works at Uber is an ex-Googler and got a 20 when rolling for kindness.

On a 3D6?

Was it a good step for Google to buy YouTube back when it was full of (way more) pirated music, movies and tv show episodes? I remember at least one article that questioned Google for buying YouTube back then, calling them out for the piracy.

That's a good point. There was a lot of speculation that they were opening themselves up for major lawsuits.

I see what you mean, but I don't think the two are comparable. Granted, my morals about copyright infringement are a lot looser than sexual impropriety.

The point being they've improved a LOT since the acquisition, and that they can do the same with Uber. I feel it's wrong to assume that Google wont do anything to fix up Uber if they do acquire them.

Not quite - the Youtube co-founders intentionally kept most of the piracy claims/problems under wraps until after the Google acquisition. Uber may have been trying to do the same with the sexual harassment, except now it's out in the open, pre-acquisition.

https://www.forbes.com/2010/04/21/google-viacom-youtube-medi...

I remember a lot of the piracy situation improving sometime after Google took over. I remember YouTube as the place you could type a movie or show quote and find a clip for that movie or show quote. Now you're lucky if you find it on YouTube, especially if you find the original clip without any oddness to it.

The single greatest "innovation" at YT was the monitization scheme and licencing deals that automatically shuffled ad revenue to the copyright holders, effectively solving the piracy issues while still allowing users to share whatever they wanted to whatever soundtrack (with some exceptions).

That innovation was mostly a financial one and probably could only have been brought about with the leverage of the existing Google ad network, and the critical mass of users using YT for music piracy. YT is a much better experience for it too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxigNvJxGn4 Teenage Mutant Hardcore Turtles was one my favorite first memes. I was so saddened when the soundtrack was ripped out when I went to show my friends. I was pleasantly surprised to have the true sound track back after Google fixed the moneyz.

Why not? They are not complicit in this, and they can have legitimate claim to clean it up. And even some credit for the future, where they can treat new cases as "remnants from the old management". Of course, that credit will expire, but not immediately.

"Google is going to increase or fully acquire Uber."

Talk about a "God's View", they'd be literally begging for regulator's attention if they tried buying Uber

So now's the time to do it, in other words.

> they'd be literally begging for regulator's attention if they tried buying Uber

How so? Regulatory attention of mergers isn't based on prospective dominance of markets which don't yet exist, in most jurisdictions.

It would be a prospective purchase in regards to autonomous driving software but Uber holds a current dominating market share in ride-sharing. They could potentially single-handedly create fear of an information monopoly and be the impetus for the fed's to look at re-writing anti-trust. It's almost too sexy of an acquisition at a time when governments seem to be losing trust in them. I could be wrong obviously, but that would just seem like a bad idea in the long term, both for the price, and for the microscope it would put on them.

> It would be a prospective purchase in regards to autonomous driving software but Uber holds a current dominating market share in ride-sharing.

Do they? Specifically, do they have pricing power? Market share (even superficially dominant share) where competitors or substitute services are present and business moves in response to relative price changes isn't market power.

I would argue against that, I couldn't think of anything more powerful in an industry than a company that could use it's tens of billions of dollars in operating profit annually to fund their efforts to dominate ride-sharing as well. You are making a good point, but although there is a fine line in regards to its prospective market power until they can make it profitable and sustain it afterward, I don't see how this doesn't lead to bad things for them down the road even if it something like this did get approval

I am not so sure.

Google and uber don't directly compete in many areas.

In order for regulators to stop the deal, there would have to be a competitive concern.

The only area that they "compete" in is self driving cars. But that market literally doesn't exist yet, so it is a hard argument to make that this would be anticompetitive.

How would Google deal with Uber's massively inflated $69 billion valuation?

Would investors who bought shares be compensated with pennies on the dollar? Would some investors get more than others?

What motivates people to put in money at these absurd valuations? The hope that they'll come true just some of the time?

Uber shareholders may find pennies on the dollar to be preferable to bankruptcy.

Let them be sued into bankruptcy and then pick up the pieces afterward?

If Uber is like the other unicorn companies, the investors that gave it the massive valuation have shareholder agreements that allow them to get paid before everyone else does. Anyone with common shares (e.g. employees, etc.) would get virtually nothing.

Would suck big time but also be entirely predictable for employees with options/golden-handcuffs who end up with nothing.

And if there have been multiple rounds at multiple valuations, then multiple agreements and/or complex negotiations. It seems logical that the principle is that the outside world just isn't going to know the ratio of optimism to desperation in a high valuation - since saying "You're buy at a high valuation" is equally saying you "get the money for a low valuation first".

The investors don't control the company. Only the board does. Sometimes that includes investors but it definitely doesn't control all of them. The board is required to do what's best for ALL shareholders, even if that means lower returns for some of them.

Uber raised $9B (1). Presumably this is all preferred stock or convertible debt, which is paid out 100% in an acquisition. That means investors only lose money and if Uber is acquired for under $9B. Over $9B, then investors and common shareholders splits the proceeds according to their ownership (2).

I'm simplifying as the liquidation preference matters based on the different valuations that investors paid.

For example, if Uber is acquired for $30B, then all the investors who paid above that valuation, would get their money back first. Then remaining investors and common shareholders would get their % split of the remaining pool of capital.

1) https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber#/entity

2)Usually this is how it works, but sometimes the terms vary.

Further, Google Ventures invested hundreds of millions of dollars early on in Uber's life -- The eventual sale price would be discounted by their percentage ownership. E.G. if Google owns 10% of private Uber, and they offer $10 Billion for the company, their net would be $9 billion.

I think it would be a merger of equals type structure so the valuation stays academic vs. a buyout. You are correct but just to add a bit more about the board, they are pretty much the largest investors. If you look at CrunchBase other than the black female they tacked on in late 2016, it's mostly VCs, PE, and Saudis SW fund on the board. Kalanick had "controlling" shares and provisions but ultimately either through the board or indirectly, if you're not profitable (or not profitable enough) large shareholders control your fate, even if on paper they dont

Uber would totally be worth 70 Billion as an Alphabet subsidiary, but there's no way Alphabet would acquire it for that price. Put Susan Wocjicki in charge of Uber, and have her pull a Stephen Elop routine to drive down Uber's valuation to something Alphabet can afford. Then just rebrand the whole thing as Waymo.

...they would have to fold under the Uber brand. Alphabet/Google automatically gives it credibility.

Or, Google could do nothing and let Uber fail. Lyft would probably pick out the good employees. All of the drivers would just stop using the Uber app since many use both or could easily switch. The C suite would be gone by this point. At this point once self driving tech is perfected Lyft would just buy it from Google.

comparing https://www.lyft.com/cities to https://www.uber.com/cities/ it seems like there is a huge discrepancy between the cities that have lyft and those that have uber. Uber has a significant international availability.

I'm wondering, what prevents Lyft from just starting to operate in all the cities Uber already operates in? Does Uber reach individual deals with the cities to get permits?

It might be more of a support thing, although I would love to hear an answer from someone who knows more about this.

There are a few reasons this is hard.

1) I'd imagine there are significant costs to entering a new city. Uber is a two-sided marketplace so in any new city Uber needs to invest resources and time into acquiring supply/drivers and to a lesser extent users. Combine this with the operational support to maintain that marketplace and the overhead becomes non-negligible.

2) First mover advantage is a real thing so any ride-sharing network that enters a city with an established player is going to have a harder time acquiring the aforementioned supply/demand.

3) When more than one ride-sharing company is in a city it eventually turns into a subsidy war for demand. From what I have read this is what happened to Uber competing with Didi in China and resulted in massive losses for both companies.

TL;DR entering new markets is in fact pretty expensive, and far more so when there is existing competition.

It's only a two-sided marketplace if you need drivers. If Google uses Waymo tech to remove drivers from the equation, there's only one side to the market that they have to consider, which makes it a much easier proposition to enter those markets. The legal/compliance issues are probably the bigger hurdle since they can't hide behind "independent contractors" the way Uber has.

They need to spin up marketing in each locality, which is both costly and requires nuance with local colloquialisms and existing market forces (e.g., knowing what ITP and OTP mean in Atlanta, or the huge taxi market in NYC). It's probably the hardest part to scale.

They also need local support infrastructure. Lyft actually does an in-person interview with every driver, which requires a human being there. They have at least re-used resources by promoting certain drivers to a higher level that enables them to run these interviews. But bootstrapping that infrastructure requires some effort.

Between the costs, the marketing efforts, and the support infra, it's not as easy as just flipping a switch.

How many of those cities are Uber actually operating profitably in?

I took a 2hr ride across Paris at rush hour last year for $8. I'm guessing not many.

Meh, why would they? Better buy would be Lyft, and then just pour money and crush Uber completely.

> Meh, why would they?

I think the suggestion is based on an anticipated Uber firesale price resulting from its recent legal and HR issues.

Uber relies on Google Maps for now, but they are building out their own mapping solution in increasingly more countries and have reportedly made huge investments in mapping.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/7/31/12338268/uber-maps-invest...

Uber applies some ridiculous optimizations to their map and routing often times ending a trip while in blocks away from where I need to be and leaving a confused driver (and frustrated passenger). Lyft never has this issue.

Waymo has a partnership with lyft right now, so that would be pretty tricky

Seems like Uber's wanton disregard for law makes them a gigantic liability bomb that no big company is going to want to acquire.

With GV being an investor in Uber, the whole lawsuit seems very weird. Any GV partners on Uber's board? How did they not know?

I'm not sure Google wants to manage a large network of freelancers/drivers without benefits. Would look terrible when the software engineers have all the benefits...then again they could offer benefits for drivers...

I think Facebook or Apple (maybe Amazon) might want a piece of the pie. The integration would be seamless...then again who knows!

Misleading title. Makes it sound like they were wrong and are backing off. The patents being dropped are those which Uber is no longer using but was using at some point in their prototypes. There remains one key patent that Uber is still using and Alphabet is still suing them for it.

Thanks, we've updated the title slightly to clarify.

Google's spin is that they're dropping them because they're no longer using them, but the reality is that the judge has told them they're wrong:

> Judge William Alsup of Federal District Court in San Francisco, who is overseeing the case, urged the company’s lawyers at a hearing on June 7 to drop the patent claims because "you’re going to lose on all these patent claims unless you pull some rabbit out of a hat."

"you’re going to lose on all these patent claims ..." because Uber is no longer using them.

Waiting to be asked by the judge to drop them is the only valid political chess move they had. Withdrawing them without being asked would be worse, IMO. But the reason remains the same: Uber used to have them in their design/prototypes but they no longer do.

The judge asked them to drop all the patent claims, even the one that Google claims Uber is still using/infringing, which means it's unlikely to be related to whether or not Uber was or continues to infringe on them and more likely to be related to the strength of the patents themselves. A lot of patents get invalidated during cases like these...

"Likely to ne related to the strength of the patents" means that the patents have been scrutinized by the court and determined to be invalid. But that is not the case.

The trade secrets part of the case supposedly has legs, just not very long ones given Uber didn't use the trade secrets Levandowski supposedly stole.

When Waymo first levied the case against Uber I was of the unpopular opinion that it wasn't as strong as it looked. Nonetheless, it ruined Levandowski's career and counted for about a gallon's worth of gasoline on the fire of negative public opinion and investor rage against Uber and it's leadership. Even if Waymo loses in court, it's still a win.

> it ruined Levandowski's caree

How so? Like saying police ruined a criminal's normal life?...

TL;DR: Not much real change. "Most" is "3 out of 4". That's not quite as dramatic as the headline makes it sound. Also note that the case is primarily about trade secrets, not patents.

Does anyone know if those 14k files have any evidence linking to Uber's design? If there is no wrongdoing, Uber should continue to figure out autonomous cars as a service model.

I imagine google think they have, but the truth is, a document saying that approach X does not work would save anyone who read it a lot of money. And the only thing you'd see in the final design was that it didn't use X.

Reformatted for mobile users:

EDIT: The parent edited their comment, so I've removed my reply, as it's no longer necessary.

This seems like a valuable service, and I'd like to continue doing this, but perhaps I'll add a disclaimer asking people not to talk about HN in the replies to minimize noise. If you have questions or concerns about the site, please email hn@ycombinator.com rather than leaving a comment.

As a desktop user with a 30" monitor I also appreciate this reformatting. The other method of quoting renders in monospaced font that looks bad.

Come on hacker news, fix your css.

The CSS is correct. Abusing code formatting for quotes is the problem.

(The fact that HN has no dedicated markup for quotes and very little available markup at all is also a problem, but using code blocks for quotes is not a solution, or even a good workaround, for that.)

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14720569 and marked it off-topic.

Thanks! I don't know whether to keep doing this or not so if you have an opinion one way or the other, let me know.

The community seems to appreciate it, but on the other hand it adds noise. Though one benefit is that it nudges users toward using italics for quotes instead of code blocks.

It seems to me, that Waymo/Google has no real interest in their self-driving car program.

Anthony Levandowski went to Uber because he is interested in furthering self-driving car technology into practical applications and Uber offered to actually, really prioritize his project and make his dreams a reality. That's the only logical explanation of his actions; he thought Uber would be a better technology and business partner.

Setting aside the legal issues of whether what he did was right or not, I don't think Google would be the right custodian of this project anyway. For the greater good of the world, we need self-driving cars to become a reality.

And Google just isn't going to do it. They are invested in self-driving cars like they are invested in contact lenses, or drones, or robots, or go-playing AI, and half-dozen other things. Uber was/is a far more logical choice for a company that is going to be both motivated and pragmatic enough to bring this technology to market.

Google has been working on it for ages and we have yet to see a serious attempt at a non-academic implementation.

Umm, Waymo has an early rider program... https://waymo.com/apply/

I don't see how they have no interest, none of their other projects were upgraded to separate company status. Also, they've been working on it for 10+ years so it's outlasted most of their other "projects"

> Google has been working on it for ages and we have yet to see a serious attempt at a non-academic implementation.

I trust Google way more than Uber to do something like this right (i.e. not kill people), even if it takes "forever."

As much as I personally dislike Google, I have to agree with you here.

(I work at google)

>Google has been working on it for ages and we have yet to see a serious attempt at a non-academic implementation.

This seems like a claim made without knowledge. The 2016 autonomous vehicle disengagement reports [0][1] show that Waymo is an order of magnitude ahead of any competitor in miles driven and vehicle reliability. And as another user mentioned, Waymo is currently testing with real consumers and a large fleet of vehicles in Phoenix [2].

[0]: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disen...

[1]: https://www.wired.com/2017/02/california-dmv-autonomous-car-...

[2]: https://waymo.com/apply/

Greed is another logical explanation. I don't buy the narrative of Levandowski as some tortured idealist who just wanted his dream to shit rainbows, and Google as the neglectful parent stifling his creative growth. If that was the case he would have stuck with Otto for more autonomy.

I think Google just understands the complexity of the issue presented by true self-driving cars. I'm still highly skeptical that they're going to become a thing outside of cities and major highways anytime soon, there are simply too many edge cases to cover. That's not to say it's impossible, but Google is clearly shooting for pure self-driving cars that don't need a steering wheel, or something close to that, prior to any commercial application. Tesla and Uber are taking more iterative approaches, but they can directly benefit from mediocre/incomplete self-driving in the meantime whereas there's no incentive for Google. We'll see who gets to the holy grail first, but I wouldn't discount Google. Large-scale, public, iterative approaches, while the dominant religion in modern tech, are not a panacea.

I forget where I read this (somewhere on HN most likely), but there is a major difference between what Google/Waymo is doing and their competion. It all goes back to the DARPA days; The waymo approach is a hybrid one, its terrain detection using LiDAR as well as visual based systems. To see and "understand" the environment using a mix of these technologies is very different than what, say Tesla is doing, which is using cameras to do what is basically advanced lane following (although it is still fantastic technology). I believe that its this dichotomy in approaches which causes what people interpret as Waymo falling behind, or well, not being as ahead as they once were. Many other companies are catching up using visual based systems, but I believe there is a wall they will hit, where they will need to go through a major iteration of their technology to match what Waymo is currently doing.

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