7 ms·

Can someone explain the context for this?

by ixtli 9y ago

ixtli 9y ago
This article is among my first google results: https://gizmodo.com/the-due-diligence-report-on-otto-and-anthony-levandowsk-1819089212 https://gizmodo.com/the-due-diligence-report-on-otto-and-ant... "Levandowski mysteriously quit his job at Waymo in January 2016 (back when it was still part of Google) and went off to start Otto. Then, a few months later, Uber bought Otto, a fledgling startup that had just launched. Fast forward to this February, and Waymo accused Uber of orchestrating the entire thing to get its hands on thousands of confidential documents Levandowski downloaded before his departure."
dlgeek 9y ago
Waymo (Google's self-driving car venture) has a big lawsuit against Uber alledging patent violations (since dismissed), trade secret infringement, and assorted other claims. This is all revolving around their hiring of a senior Google manger (Anthony Levandowski) who quit google to form a bunch of companies that were then acquired by Uber. Waymo/Google have claimed that Levandowski was negotiating with Uber to steal their secret stuff well in advance of leaving Google, met Uber executives during this time, and following his meeting with them, stole a bunch of files (a big SVN checkout of their hardware repo). He also did a bunch of other bad stuff that I'm not going to get into. They've also claimed to have evidence that Uber was using their IP through some stolen boards. The pre-trial case has been really, really bad looking for Levandowski, but Waymo's been having trouble finding a smoking gun to implicate Uber as a whole. However, one of the key pieces of evidence here was a due-diligence report prepared by Stroz Friedberg that went into exactly what info Levandowski still had from Waymo/Google. Uber and Levandowski, ESPECIALLY Levandowski have been fighting really hard to prevent Waymo from getting it's hands on the report - going all the way up to the Federal Circuit Appeals court. They lost all of these, and the report was handed over a few weeks ago. This is that report. As to how big of a smoking gun it is... I'm still reading. Waymo's been claiming it is in their filings up through last week, but I haven't been able to see anything past that - something's up with either PACER or RECAP and there aren't any updates/filings on the case in over a week on RECAP for some reason. (If anyone's got a pacer account...)
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- ixtli 9y ago
  Thank you :)
- Harimwakairi 9y ago
  Thanks for writing all that out. Much easier to understand the whole story now.
- deleted 9y ago
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- united893 9y ago
  > all the way up to the Federal Circuit Appeals ... I'd be curious to know what's the most procedurally complex trial out there. I.e. One where the distance between the original suit, and the issue at hand has the most steps. I.e original suit spawned a separate suit on the admissibility of evidence which got escalated and then spawned another suit on the procedural ... etc
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    SCO v. IBM, which spawned SCO v. Novell, SCO v. Red Hat, and a couple others that I forget. Started in March 2003, and currently in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.
- gwern 9y ago
  I logged into PACER to take a look and wow, this is the longest docket I've ever seen in PACER - just the last 3 days take up my entire screen. So it's not that the case has been quiet... Might be a RECAP problem, since I don't see any RECAP links for recent filings. (I took a look at a few recent filings, but too detailed and too many redactions to make much sense of.)

Can someone explain the context for this?

by ixtli 9y ago

Can someone explain the context for this?

This article is among my first google results: https://gizmodo.com/the-due-diligence-report-on-otto-and-anthony-levandowsk-1819089212 https://gizmodo.com/the-due-diligence-report-on-otto-and-ant... "Levandowski mysteriously quit his job at Waymo in January 2016 (back when it was still part of Google) and went off to start Otto. Then, a few months later, Uber bought Otto, a fledgling startup that had just launched. Fast forward to this February, and Waymo accused Uber of orchestrating the entire thing to get its hands on thousands of confidential documents Levandowski downloaded before his departure."

dlgeek 9y ago

Waymo (Google's self-driving car venture) has a big lawsuit against Uber alledging patent violations (since dismissed), trade secret infringement, and assorted other claims. This is all revolving around their hiring of a senior Google manger (Anthony Levandowski) who quit google to form a bunch of companies that were then acquired by Uber. Waymo/Google have claimed that Levandowski was negotiating with Uber to steal their secret stuff well in advance of leaving Google, met Uber executives during this time, and following his meeting with them, stole a bunch of files (a big SVN checkout of their hardware repo). He also did a bunch of other bad stuff that I'm not going to get into. They've also claimed to have evidence that Uber was using their IP through some stolen boards. The pre-trial case has been really, really bad looking for Levandowski, but Waymo's been having trouble finding a smoking gun to implicate Uber as a whole. However, one of the key pieces of evidence here was a due-diligence report prepared by Stroz Friedberg that went into exactly what info Levandowski still had from Waymo/Google. Uber and Levandowski, ESPECIALLY Levandowski have been fighting really hard to prevent Waymo from getting it's hands on the report - going all the way up to the Federal Circuit Appeals court. They lost all of these, and the report was handed over a few weeks ago. This is that report. As to how big of a smoking gun it is... I'm still reading. Waymo's been claiming it is in their filings up through last week, but I haven't been able to see anything past that - something's up with either PACER or RECAP and there aren't any updates/filings on the case in over a week on RECAP for some reason. (If anyone's got a pacer account...)

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ixtli 9y ago
Thank you :)
Harimwakairi 9y ago
Thanks for writing all that out. Much easier to understand the whole story now.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
united893 9y ago
> all the way up to the Federal Circuit Appeals ... I'd be curious to know what's the most procedurally complex trial out there. I.e. One where the distance between the original suit, and the issue at hand has the most steps. I.e original suit spawned a separate suit on the admissibility of evidence which got escalated and then spawned another suit on the procedural ... etc
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  SCO v. IBM, which spawned SCO v. Novell, SCO v. Red Hat, and a couple others that I forget. Started in March 2003, and currently in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.
gwern 9y ago
I logged into PACER to take a look and wow, this is the longest docket I've ever seen in PACER - just the last 3 days take up my entire screen. So it's not that the case has been quiet... Might be a RECAP problem, since I don't see any RECAP links for recent filings. (I took a look at a few recent filings, but too detailed and too many redactions to make much sense of.)