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Alphabet adds patent claim to Uber intellectual property theft lawsuit
- Alex3917 10y ago> Waymo, which originally said that two Lidar patents were infringed, on Friday in an amended complaint added a third patent. It also said that Uber infringed unpatented trade secrets, such as parameters and measurements for the light beam used in Lidar. Are these trade secrets related to the patents? And if so, is Google risking having their patents invalidated by admitting they left out the best mode?
- kingbirdy 10y agoHow would they lose their patent by omitting the best settings to make it work?
- Natsu 10y agoI don't think you can any more, because the AIA changed that. (IANAL, get real legal advice if this matters to you.) https://www.fredlaw.com/news__media/2014/01/13/521/aias_elimination_of_best_mode_requirement_open_door_for_patent_and_trade_secret https://www.fredlaw.com/news__media/2014/01/13/521/aias_elim... ===== In 2011, Congress passed sweeping patent law legislation, called the America Invents Act (AIA). The AIA changed many aspects of U.S. patent law, including the consequences of failing to disclose in your patent application the “best mode” you are aware of for practicing the invention. Traditionally, if you failed to disclose the best mode in your patent application, then that could be grounds for invalidating the resulting patent. The AIA changed this; no longer can patents be invalidated for failing to include the best mode. The AIA, however, did not change the basic legal requirement that inventors and patent applicants must disclose the best mode in their patent applications. In effect, the AIA left untouched the best mode requirement, but eliminated the punishment, or at least the main punishment, for failing to comply with the requirement.
- hayksaakian 10y agoif there's no punishment, then why would you expect them to comply?
- btown 10y agoTechnically, jaywalking is illegal...
- rosser 10y agoAnd sometimes, jaywalkers get run over.
- eli 10y agoOr ticketed.
- rosser 10y agoTrue story, I've shared here before: many years ago, a co-worker had to run home for some reason in the middle of the afternoon. On his way home, a woman jaywalked in front of his Escalade on a street with a posted 40mph limit. (He wasn't driving that fast, because he was still accelerating away from the stop light.) He hit her, watched her head bounce off the hood of his vehicle, and her go flying to land in a heap a few dozen feet in front of him. He called 911, and, because there was a fire station like half a block away, the medics were on scene immediately, and the police shortly after. The policewoman who took his statement thanked him when she was done with that, and said, "Now, if you'll excuse me, sir, I'm going to go write her a ticket." He responded, "Do you have to? She's already had a bad enough day." She stopped, looked him in the eye for an uncomfortably long moment, and said, "Sir, you want me to write her this ticket..."
- jovdg 10y agoWould this mean that, while you will not get punished for not disclosing the best mode, you can not call it a trade secret either (since you were expected to disclose it in the first place)?
- jacquesm 10y agoTrade secrets and patents are roughly each others opposite. A patent is something you disclose to stake a claim in order to either license the tech or to use it in some other strategic way. A trade secret is something your company knows, does not disclose and guards as much as possible from becoming public knowledge (for instance, through NDA's with those employees that will be given access to that knowledge). Examples of each: - patent: Dyson's patent on their vacuum cleaner technology - trade secret: The formulation of Coca Cola So no, they are not related at all, and this does not risk Google having their patents invalidated.
- Alex3917 10y agoYour example seems a little contrived. Obviously the formula for Coca Cola isn't the best mode for a vacuum cleaner. My point was that if their trade secret is also the best mode for the patent, then seemingly that puts them at risk for violating the best mode requirement and having their patents revoked, depending on when they were filed.
- jacquesm 10y agoIt's not as if a patent will contain the full implementation details and of course corporations will use whatever tools we give them to protect their business interests and if that means leaving out a bunch of numbers from a patent application if the application will stand on it's own merits then you will see them do so. Patent law is not always the most intuitive thing and it works in ways that tech people usually do not readily comprehend because to them many things are 'obvious' that are not obvious to a patent examiner or someone 'skilled in the art'. And many times the software people are right (especially when it comes to software), and just as many times they are wrong or simply confused by the jargon surrounding patents. The 'best mode' is not a requirement for a patent at all, you either have something patentable, or you do not. If it stands the test of time (other paying their license fees, you winning court cases against parties infringing) then it was a strong patent. If you come up with a better mode later on that's fine and need not be disclosed. Whether or not a patent was the very best patent that you could have taken out is - as far as I know - not of any material impact to your chances of winning such cases. But what I do know is this: in some places breaking NDA's and spreading trade secrets around is a very dumb thing to do so if Google can make that claim stick the other party has a serious extra problem. The patents will be dealt with on their own, regardless of any 'modes'. Ideally this should all be disclosed, including future improvements but it's been a long time since patents were used for their original intended purpose anyway, these days it is probably best to think of them as weaponized IP.
- greglindahl 10y agoI'm not a lawyer, but I will note that when I've patented things in the past, I usually discover better things in the years after the original patent is filed. These better things might be a new "best mode", and I might patent them or keep them as a trade secret. My lawyer says that's fine.
- rosser 10y agoBroadly (and without asserting the accuracy or factual correctness of anything I say), I'm guessing it goes like: The patent describes the method of using Lidar in the context of a self-driving car. The trade secret details which frequency/frequencies of light are most effective, perhaps including which work better under what kinds of inclement conditions.
- unityByFreedom 10y agoAny lawyers know what the likely time frame is on this for some sort of resolution? This doesn't really seem like much of a development to an outsider. Just more added to the pile.
- DannyBee 10y ago(Note: I'm a lawyer, i work for Google, but not in any interesting capacity here. Being part of Google, and not waymo, i don't even have any idea about anything here :P) Define "resolution". The preliminary injunction will get ruled on fairly quickly (months most likely). You should expect either side to attempt an appeal of preliminary injunction as well (unlike most non-final judgements, in federal court, you can appeal preliminary injunctions) The actual case will take years to resolve, not counting appeals, etc. Mark lemley crunched the data: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1597919 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1597919 Note: Time to resolution includes settlement. So time to resolution is average of 1.28 years in n.d. cal, because most things settle. Time to trial if it goes to trial, in n.d. cal, is 2.92 years So a while if it goes to trial :)
- chrisper 10y agoWhat does a lawyer do on a daily basis at a tech company?
- hkmurakami 10y ago"open source lawyer" in his profile, so presumably the legalities of both open sourcing their own work as well as properly using oss in the wild.
- DannyBee 10y agoI updated it, i never bothered changing it over the years. But yes, that, as well as M&A, advice about lawsuits involving open source, etc. That's just the lawyer side though. I've never been a lawyer-only.
- rjeli 10y ago>Waymo said in its initial lawsuit that it was inadvertently copied on an email from a supplier with blueprints of Uber’s circuit board design for its lidar technology
- hawkice 10y agoThis claim is so absurdly easy to verify with that 3rd party that I'm actually decently sure this isn't corporate espionage.
- lwf 10y agoWhy would that third party answer honestly? Aside from the possible negative reputation damage, that party is almost certainly prohibited from answering Waymo as part of standard bilateral NDAs executed between partners. In a suit, at least, they can compel discovery and demand accurate testimony.
- rjeli 10y agoYeah, wasn't thinking of espionage - more like someone at the manufacturer thinking "hmm, these are exactly the same designs... I should make this known... whoops, sent it to the wrong person!"
- londons_explore 10y agoOne might imagine a verbal conversation between google (who already suspect their design has been stolen) and the supplier (who they know is the only company in the world who can make it) saying: "Ya know that uber design which is the same as ours? Mind accidentally CC'ing johnsmith@google.com instead of johnsmith@uber.com? Since johnsmith used to work for google, it would be an honest mistake, and would give us the evidence we need to take this to court"
- chaser7016 10y agoI'm sure it was done purposely by someone in that organization who hates Uber too! You can't act as they have and not have hordes of enemies!
- KKKKkkkk1 10y agoGoogle is now a company that holds a patent on a product, does not produce or market said product, but sues other companies for trying to produce that product for alleged infringement of the patent.
- DannyBee 10y ago"does not produce or market said product," Errr, they are making cars, so ....
- detaro 10y agoWhere do you get the idea from that Waymo isn't using said product? (They don't manufacture it themselves, but that's a technicality)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- unityByFreedom 10y agoApples and oranges. Google's active development of self driving tech is widely known. The same can't be said of patent trolls like Intellectual Ventures who never intend to produce anything. Intent, while it may not currently apply to patent law, does apply in other areas of law. Perhaps it will never apply to patents. But the public is not so short sighted as to not see the difference here.
- Fricken 10y agoThey use the same Lidar technology from (Levandowski founded) 510 systems for Google Streetview. That's a product.
- deelowe 10y agoGoogle is and has been in negations to license the tech with several start-ups and auto manufacturers. Hell, uber was one of them. Surely you don't expect a software company to all of a sudden get into the business of selling cars?
- bitmapbrother 10y agoGoogle already uses their self driving technology on vehicles such as the Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivans: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/12/waymo-shows-off-its-new-rides-self-driving-chrysler-pacifica-hybrid-minivans/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/12/waymo-shows-off-its-new... So they're clearly a practicing entity.
- yeukhon 10y agoSo I have a serious question. If I worked on Google's self-driving project, how can I prevent me from using that knowledge at another company? More importantly, if i were truly one of the founding members of the projects, I would know inside out and best practices. So seriously, what should I do? Do I just pretend "I don't know the best practice" BS at my staff meeting?
- HappyTypist 10y agoThere is a difference between applying existing field knowledge, and downloading tens of thousands of design documents from a server you normally did not access.
- blurble 10y agoYou can probably reimplement (providing no patent infringement) but not steal. Same as if you built some kind of web app or other software.
- EnFinlay 10y agoBest practices !== detailed designs Best practices are not 9.7 gigs of data, designs, and calculations. Edit: I am assuming that the 9.7 gigs was data, designs and calculations. Could have been the best cat pictures ever. I just don't know.
- yeukhon 10y agoBut what about knowing how to implement the algorithm? Even something like implementing a dashboard for SRE/DevOps, I can rebuild it given enough time again.
- Qworg 10y agoThe key statement is "given enough time". Innovation keeps moving; you're falling behind, even as you're trying to re-implement something you've done before.
- tonyedgecombe 10y ago
- blurble 10y agoI deleted my uber account last night. This is a company I can't give money to any more. I'd heard enough of their culture. I suspected their app had been lying to me as well. Most times when I'd used it, it said a car was like 3 minutes away. When i booked i'd end up waiting for 10 or more. This sounds like a typical uber ploy to make things look better than they are. When i heard they had that app to deceive regulators i realised i was done. Given what I've heard recently the behaviour in this claim sounds highly plausible. Maybe their chickens are coming home to roost...
- jeffdavis 10y agoHas google ever filed a lawsuit without merit before? It seems like they have a record of acting responsibly, so I would think this looks bad for Uber.
- GooglyMoogly 10y agoGoogle has only ever filed 2 patent suits. This one against Uber, and one against BT. The BT one was only after BT gave meritless patents to patent trolls under the condition that the patent trolls would immediately sue Google and Android phone manufacturers. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-21458094 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-21458094
- sametmax 10y agoI have many things to say about Google's bad behavior, but being a patent troll definitively isn't one. Their policy seems to be busy on innovating and letting others catching up.
- lkesteloot 10y agoOkay, I'm all for protecting intellectual property and dissuading employees from taking IP with them. But if this injunction delays self-driving cars by even a little bit, it'll cost thousands of lives. If the deaths were going to happen tomorrow, no judge would allow it. But because they'll happen seven years from now, no one considers it.
- EnFinlay 10y agoI dunno about all that. "For the greater good" "Ends justify the means" all come to mind. If it's theft, it's theft. If it's within the law to stop them from continuing to develop off of allegedly stolen IP, then that's the right decision. It's not like pharma companies have a free for all where everyone can steal from everyone because the more development on cancer treatment eleventy billion the better. To put it differently, there's no guarantee that preventing Uber from working on this technology will cost lives in the future (Uber might not exist in 7 years and the technology might be a dead end), therefore it shouldn't be a factor.
- lkesteloot 10y agoBut if those deaths were to occur tomorrow, absolutely the ends would justify the means. There's no judge in America who would kill 10k people tomorrow just to do justice to Uber. But because those are in the future (and as you say, hard to prove now), it's not even considered. But they're real deaths of real people. There's going to be a year when self-driving cars become ubiquitous and deaths from cars drop to almost zero. The previous year, many thousands will die in cars. Those deaths are avoidable by pushing this agenda forward, and preventing Uber from moving forward hurts the agenda.
- dragonwriter 10y agoPrivileging theft in this area by not punishing Uber discourages the further investments necessary to develop the technology so that those lives will be saved, setting things back more than any punishment to Uber would.
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- bobedybobbob 10y agoI was under the impression Google (or Google Ventures) owned part of Uber - surely this will make things complicated?
- matt4077 10y agoNot at all. They'll just end up owning a lot more of it.
- visarga 10y agoGoogle may be in the right, but this litigious stance does not play well with the democratization of self driving cars. I hope there will be multiple companies offering SDC and a few open source ones, not litigated out of existence. I don't want SDC technology be kept secret like Google Rank. It is very important that automation be generally available as open source and not restricted by patents, because it might accentuate the migration of capital to the top 1%. We need to empower the 99% as well, as owners of automation, not simple clients of Google and the likes.
- brianwawok 10y agoNo part of robotization is going to help the 99%. The difference is only accelerating with new technology.
- CaptainSwing 10y agoIf 'the 99%' owned the robots it could help
- visarga 10y agoWe should be able to have open source robots. Most AI tools are open source. Datasets as well, at least the research ones. 3D printers and CNC might help with making robot bodies.
- asadlionpk 10y agoTools are open, code is open, but datasets are not. I think they are the main 'secret sauce' in case of self-driving cars.
- CaptainSwing 10y agoThe source code (data sets, license, etc) is one thing, but the actual physical robot is something else.
- commenter55 10y ago
- petra 10y agoSo now, since those trade secrets are made public via the court, anybody can use them, right ? Does this have a big influence on Google's competitive positioning ?
- polishTar 10y agoIt's likely for any trade secrets to be filed under-seal. Probably won't change anything.
- londons_explore 10y agoTheres a bunch of info in the filings (64 beams, single lens, curved focal plane, etc.)
- samwerbroother 10y agoGoogle just can't stand fair competition with other companies, because they are too slow and made absolutely no progress in the last couple of years regarding self driving cars. Tesla, Uber and other companies are very agile and develop new technologies waaaaay faster than Google can ever imagine. By the way, Tesla build their cars in the US, instead of outsourcing manufacturing to cheap countries.
- chaser7016 10y agoHopefully they get an injunction that ceases Uber from its self driving car dreams and or wipes them out of existence. You can not act as they have without major consequence(karma)!
- commenter55 10y agoAs I posted in the other Waymo thread on the front page. Go read the actual court filings. All the news articles are leaving out important details. Techcrunch has them linked at the end of their article: https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/10/waymo-files-for-an-injunction-against-ubers-use-of-its-self-driving-tech/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/10/waymo-files-for-an-injunct... Important bits: injunction page 23 line 12-14: Waymo is not seeking to enjoin Defendants from pursuing self driving cars in toto. Waymo merely asks that Defendants not be allowed to use Waymos trade secrets in doing so. Page 24 8-9: Moreover, Defendants would be free to use non-infringing alternative components in their business, such as the same third-party LiDAR system that they had previously used before switching to Waymos patented technology. (Fun fact) From the Gary Brown testimony, page 4 lines 6-8 (Paraphrasing) The "database" was an SVN server, and the specialty software installed was TortoiseSVN.
- chaser7016 10y agoWell Google should be more aggressive but that would be hypocritical of them as they do this stuff themselves to the little guys with no money only a dream/gumption(met with them in 2013 to discuss my audio syncing across multiple devices tech.. it was like that Silicon Valley episode but worse) to im sure their wealthy competitors.
- transfire 10y agoThat's a brilliant plan. Lets wipeout thousands of jobs and billions in investment equity because... you know "karma". And for what? Because they have to play hardball in a field drowning in entrenched money interests? As for this particular case, I have to say it seems a little strange to me that Anthony Levandowski could just leave Google and start his own company, Otto, with Google's intellectual property. No one complained then. But when Uber buys Otto, now it's a problem. One has to wonder who is playing who exactly?