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Judge orders Uber not to use technology taken from Waymo
- tomglynch 9y agoHow do they go about enforcing this?
- MBCook 9y agoThat's my question. Given that Uber claims they weren't using the technology... how can you tell if they stopped? Just forbid them from using LIDAR altogether?
- Analemma_ 9y agoWaymo is allowed to look at the devices and supporting documentation and see if there is any stolen IP.
- rotflmao 9y agoUber is allowed to continue working on and using LIDAR. The article has intentionally mislead you because Uber is every journalist's favorite boogeyman right now.
- bdonlan 9y agoEffectively this means that if they were using it, and they continue using it, they can add contempt of court to the list of potential charges I guess.
- rhino369 9y agoThe judge could have gone that broad and issued a total injunction, but he purposely didn't. I've been involved in situations like this. The end result is likely the status quo. Both parties will fight over it more, of course. But if Uber says they don't have or use the documents, they'll just continue business as usual.
- linkregister 9y agoThis is answered in the actual injunction document. Uber is required to perform a thorough accounting of any design aspects stemming from the trade secrets noted in Waymo's filing. Uber is required to interview all individuals who worked with Levandowski to circumvent Levandowski's usage of the 5th Amendment self-incrimination protections. If Uber can't compel the information the court seeks, it must use its full authority to obtain it. Judge Alsop explicitly says Uber must terminate any uncooperative employee. A Waymo attorney and an expert get to audit Uber's self-driving technology to identify aspects of the trade secrets annotated in Waymo's filing. The enforcement is that if Waymo's expert and attorney unearth any lack of compliance by Uber, they can face Contempt of Court charges. Since Waymo is pursuing this case zealously, I expect this to be enough incentive for Uber to follow the court order in good faith. In the past, Uber has complied with discovery motions even when the results embarrassed the company, e.g. the executive venting: about how he wishes he could dig up dirt to discredit a journalist.
- phamilton 9y agoAs I understand it, Google is granted expedited discovery and Uber basically has to allow Google to give a stamp of approval that they aren't using stolen tech. I imagine that puts the burden of proof of "stolen tech" on Google though, so they can't just make claims without evidence. Any attorneys want to confirm/correct my understanding?
- GeneralMayhem 9y agoI can't comment on the ins and outs of discovery, but I will point out that "Google" is inaccurate - the plaintiff is Waymo, which is a sibling company to Google.
- evanriley 9y agoIs this enforceable? Or is it more of a "If you get caught using it in the future more legal ramifications?"
- abhi3 9y agoViolating a judgment would invite contempt proceedings, which means huge fines for Uber and possible prison for all involved senior executives.
- mediocrejoker 9y agoSure, theoretically they are required to follow this and the consequences for not doing so are dire. In practice, however, is there any way for the judge to know if Uber is complying, or does this essentially rely on the honor system?
- delegate 9y agoDidn't Uber pay like $680,000,000 for this technology ?
- Dangeranger 9y agoPaying for stolen goods doesn't make them your property.
- idbehold 9y agoUber should start a suit against Levandowski.
- kbenson 9y agoWell, that might incite Levandowski to explain just how much Uber knew and the situation was premeditated in an effort to protect himself. Given Google's assertions, if there is any truth to them I think that might open them up to being prosecuted for fraud.
- yazaddaruvala 9y agoUber should have uncovered this during due diligence. I'm not sure if they can even sue Levandowski at this point.
- mahyarm 9y agoHow can you although? Show us what is on every hard drive you ever owned? Uber doesnt have access to googles internal security logs.
- waisbrot 9y agoThe court order says that Uber was talking with Levandowski about buying his company _while he was still working at Google_: > Meanwhile, emails between Uber executives on January 12 and January 13 showed they had prepared a document titled “NewCo Milestones v5” for Levandowski to review in advance of a meeting the following day. He didn't quit until the 27th. If you're poaching someone highly-placed off of your competitor you either have a plan for how you'll prove that they _didn't_ steal secrets or (like Uber) you get court orders to expose all your files.
- golfer 9y agoLink to the full injunction text: https://www.scribd.com/document/348409551/Waymo-Uber-Injunction#from_embed https://www.scribd.com/document/348409551/Waymo-Uber-Injunct...
- golfer 9y agoWaymo is going to be able to inspect Uber's LIDAR and get additional expedited discovery: "Waymo is hereby granted further expedited discovery in aid of possible further provisional relief. Subject to the protective order, and upon reasonable notice, Waymo’s counsel and one expert may inspect any and all aspects of defendants’ ongoing work involving LiDAR — including, without limitation,schematics, work orders, source code, notes, and emails — whether or not said work resulted in any prototype or device. Withrespect to its trade secret misappropriation claims only, Waymo may take seven further depositions on seven calendar days notice, may propound 28 reasonably narrow document requests for which the response time is reduced to 14 calendar days, and may propound 28 reasonably narrow interrogatories for which theresponse time is also reduced to 14 calendar days. If Waymo moves for further provisional relief before trial, then all its declarants in support of such motion must sit for depositions on an expedited basis. Otherwise, defendants may take only normal, unexpedited discovery. After Waymo has exhausted its expedited discovery, it may continue with normal discovery."
- mabbo 9y agoWaymo is further granted the right to pull down the defendants' pants, and point and laugh at their genitals. I mean, seriously, they've just been granted a shit load of access to their biggest competitors secrets. Pray they don't abuse that...
- dlgeek 9y agoDoesn't work that way. When they say "Waymo", they really mean "Waymo's attorney's and hired independent expert(s)". The attorney's get to see the stuff as "Attorney's Eyes Only" (AEO) and then report back summaries to their clients. They have an ethical obligation not to disclose the full details.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- greentrust 9y agoThis ruling was actually relatively good news for Uber, it could have been worse. It's only a partial preliminary injunction, they can still continue working on self-driving technology.
- jacquesm 9y agoWhether they can continue with what they have remains to be seen. They are and always have been and probably will be in the future at liberty to start from a clean slate, so they're free to 'continue working on self-driving technology'.
- rotflmao 9y agoWow, this article is so far off the ruling. Alsup found the patent infringement cases meritless and said Waymo's trade secret claims are an overreach and that Waymo is trying to claim ownership over general principles and approaches in the field. Uber will be allowed to keep working on the SDCs and on LIDAR. Only strikes against Uber is that Levandowski can't work on LIDAR, which Uber already took action on before the injunction was unsealed, and the discovery rights granted to Waymo. This article is a perfect example of the extreme media bias against Uber. Edit: two downvotes within seconds of posting the truth? I know that downvote baiting is frowned upon but these posts are filled with so many people astroturfing for Google, Waymo and Lyft that this comment is going to get downvoted anyways, because some people really don't want the truth to be the most upvoted comment. Honestly all these stories look like the Apple stories that inevitable turn into fanboy flamewars. There are so many HNers with conflicts of interest upvoting these stories and participating in them that almost none of the comments can be trusted as genuine or rational.
- jforman 9y agoI find your analysis to be incorrect. To avoid needless bickering about it, here are the first few paragraphs of the ruling, which people can derive their own conclusions from: "By way of summary, this order finds plaintiff Waymo LLC has shown compellingevidence that its former star engineer, Anthony Levandowski, downloaded over 14,000confidential files from Waymo immediately before leaving his employment there. The evidenceshows that, both before and after his departure, Levandowski and defendant Uber Technologies,Inc., planned for Uber to acquire Levandowski’s new companies, defendants Ottomotto LLCand Otto Trucking LLC, and to hire Levandowski as the head of its self-driving car efforts. Moreover, defendants and Levandowski anticipated and took steps to defend against litigationwith Waymo in connection with his move to Uber. Significantly, the evidence indicates that, during the acquisition, Uber likely knew or at least should have known that Levandowski had taken and retained possession of Waymo’s confidential files. Waymo has also sufficientlyshown, for purposes of the instant motion only, that the 14,000-plus purloined files likelycontain at least some trade secrets, and that some provisional relief is warranted while this case progresses toward trial. The scope of relief warranted at this stage, however, is limited byseveral countervailing factors. As nonexhaustive examples, not all of Waymo’s 121 asserted trade secrets actually qualify as such, and few have been traced into the accused technology. Waymo’s patent infringement accusations on this motion also proved meritless. Accordingly,this order grants important but narrowly-tailored provisional relief necessary to equitably balance the parties’ competing needs at this stage. Now follow the details."
- pfarnsworth 9y agoSome highlights from the injunction: 1. "Waymo’s patent theories are too weak to support any provisional relief." 2. "By contrast, the trade secrets case presented by Waymo does warrant provisional relief." 3. "Moreover, 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. Under these circumstances and on this record, no adverse inference that could be drawn in Waymo’s favor would justify overlooking these problems, pretending that all 121 of Waymo’s asserted trade secrets are valid, and enjoining defendants from using any of them so as to effectively halt Uber’s self-driving efforts until trial." 4. "Waymo is hereby granted further expedited discovery in aid of possible further provisional relief. Subject to the protective order, and upon reasonable notice, Waymo’s counsel and one expert may inspect any and all aspects of defendants’ ongoingwork involving LiDAR — including, without limitation,schematics, work orders, source code, notes, and emails — whether or not said work resulted in any prototype or device." EDIT: one more I forgot, which is interesting: 5. This order, however, threatens no sanctions against Levandowski. It simply directs Uber, a private employer, to do whatever it can to ensure that its employees return 14,000-plus pilfered files to their rightful owner. If Uber were to threaten Levandowski with termination for noncompliance,that threat would be backed up by only Uber’s power as a private employer, and Levandowski would remainfree to forfeit his private employment to preserve his Fifth Amendment privilege. No binding case law holdsthat the Fifth Amendment prohibits such actions by private employers. In short, in complying with this order,Uber has no excuse under the Fifth Amendment to pull any punches as to Levandowski. Basically, if Levandowski refuses to turn over the documents, Uber is forced to fire him, which means the $250,000,000 they already gave him goes up in smoke.
- manyoso 9y agoI think Waymo laywers are very happy with the expedited discovery ruling and the order that Uber must make every effort to compel the return of the 14,000 files. This might not have been the bombshell ruling against Uber that they were hoping for, but it sets up that bombshell ruling if they can actually find the evidence with this new discovery.
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- eddieplan9 9y agoThe 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".
- enraged_camel 9y ago>>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."
- megamindbrian 9y agoWow I didn't know there was more than one way to write Monte Carlo, Haar, Point-cloud algorithms. At what point does "hire an engineer to do something" become "common-knowledge"?
- joshuamorton 9y ago(am a googler) The accusation here is that Levandowski stole proprietary hardware designs, not algorithms. (well there was also an allegation that he stole "math" but alsup denied that)
- eddieplan9 9y agoAnd 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.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- rimjeilly 9y agoif this is all legit, it baffles me that this guy thought he would be able to 'download' anything and take it and not be caught... weird
- Analemma_ 9y agoIME, a lot of engineers, especially high-level ones, don't realize the extent to which IT monitors their actions. They know the technology is there but think it's being used on "other people", and that just because their computers are less locked-down, to allow for installing dev tools, that means they're less-surveilled.
- dsacco 9y agoYou'd be shocked how many engineers I've had to personally tell not to download pirated media or porn on their work computers.
- yeukhon 9y agoHow come Levandowski isn't sued for stealing data? Doesn't what he did to Google considered stealing? I would have called for police investigation for someone so prominent stealing my company's data.
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoWell, the judge requested federal prosecutors to take a look.
- vilhelm_s 9y agoThis was mentioned in the HN discussion[1] about the other order, which denied enforcing arbitration. There are two separate lawsuits, one against Uber (this one), and one against Levandowski. Because of his employment agreement, the Levandowski suit is done through arbitration rather than a court. Uber moved to consolidate the two suits and force the combined suit into arbitration, but the court denied the motion. Also, the court also referred the case to the U.S. Attorney for a possible criminal investigation, so depending on what they decide Levandowski could come under criminal charges also. (He is already taking the 5th.) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14321044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14321044
- yeukhon 9y agoThanks, I didn't read that properly. Hopefully truth will come out of criminal investigation.
- i_like_lamp 9y agoCheck out the forensic expert's testimony for yourself. It's hardly conclusive that he took the files in question. Interpretations of the testimony are very speculative.
- Animats 9y agoLevandowski is going to come out of this OK. He was doing self-driving years before Google. As I've pointed out before, the whole LIDAR thing is a side issue. Google's LIDAR is another Velodyne-like spinning thing. Google's patented innovation is to make each scan beam slightly oval, which is marginally useful but not essential. Spinning 3D LIDAR units are research and prototyping tools. The future is either flash LIDAR or MEMS. Even Velodyne is moving beyond the spinning top thing.[1] Here's a video with some images from Continental's flash LIDAR.[2] That's suitable for production cars. Continental is a big German auto parts company. They make other LIDAR products, vehicle cameras and processors, radars, GPS units, and most of the other parts needed for self-driving. Continental demoed a self-driving car in 2013. They have 1,300 people working on this. Uber makes a lot of noise, but Continental is going to ship product in volume. Quanergy, a Silicon Valley startup, announced a flash LIDAR last year, but they seem to be having problems getting it out the door. A new startup, TetraView, got series A funding to develop a higher resolution flash LIDAR ("2K", they boast), using standard CMOS technology.[3] That, if it works, will bring the price down further while increasing the resolution, and will have other robotics applications. So nobody really needs the Waymo LIDAR technology. For testing, you can buy a Velodyne, and for production, the flash LIDAR people are almost ready. [1] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/velodyne-lidar-enters-the-no-spin-zone/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/velodyne-lidar-enters-the... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxy08YX0C8w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxy08YX0C8w [3] http://www.tetravue.com/technology/ http://www.tetravue.com/technology/
- lern_too_spel 9y agoThe LIDAR is just how Waymo realized some of its technology had been stolen. Presumably, they want to use discovery to find what else has been stolen.