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Judge Tells Uber Lawyer: ‘It Looks Like You Covered This Up’
- Hupriene 9y agoIf Uber is found to have stolen trade secrets, how large is the judgment against them likely to be? Is it based on some multiple of the cost of the research that produced those secrets? Or the market value of those secrets?
- thisisit 9y agoI guess similar to how royalty payment suits are settled.
- DannyB2 9y agoIf it was a secret driving sauce, like the Coke formula, maybe the owner of that secret isn't interested in licensing it for royalties.
- jhall1468 9y agoIn which case they get an injunction and Uber can't use the tech or the fruits of it. They'd be screwed as far as self-driving is concerned.
- rhino369 9y agoA royalty is an option, but the court could also award Google's lost profits or Ubers ill-gotten gains. Or both.
- fixermark 9y agoI'm not a lawyer, but I was under the impression that the worst thing that could happen would be that Uber would be forbidden from using the stolen technology or its fruits. ... which would basically be akin to telling them "Get out of the self-driving vehicle business."
- mikejb 9y agoThat is the worst that can come out of this case - and it would be a critical hit for Uber. Self-driving will be a big aspect of the future (how long that future's away is a different discussion), but once self-driving cars are here, what would Uber's business be? Kalanick himself said this: "If we are not tied for first, then the person who is in first, or the entity that's in first, then rolls out a ride-sharing network that is far cheaper or far higher-quality than Uber's, then Uber is no longer a thing" OTOH, Alsup (the judge in this case) recommended to look into a criminal investigation against Uber, which seems to be in progress considering that is what lead to the Jacob's letter in Alsup's hands. That potential investigation could have worse impact than just "don't do self-driving cars". Depending on the verdict, it could lead to anything between nothing to prison time for numerous executives to the point that the company itself would struggle to survive.
- pitaj 9y ago> struggle to survive it probably would result in Uber being acquired
- joshuamorton 9y agoAlso not a lawyer. >would be that Uber would be forbidden from using the stolen technology or its fruits No, that's pretty much already happened as part of the preliminary injunction. Uber has so far argued that insofar as Levandowski had and may have used trade secrets, they never made it into any production vehicles, and so firing Levandowski meets that bar. If Google wins the lawsuit, there are probably damages to be had. In addition to saying "no, stop using this or any of its fruits", my understanding is that the court can order Uber to pay Google for the advantages it god. In other words, if the trade secrets advanced Uber's autonomous vehicle initiatives by a year, they might be liable for a year's worth of autonomous vehicle R&D costs, and also need to start over from not having any trade secrets.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> No, that's pretty much already happened as part of the preliminary injunction. A preliminary injunction goes away with (or before) final resolution of the case (though it may, at that time, be replaced with a permanent injunction.)
- bitmapbrother 9y agoI believe Waymo is asking for 1.8 billion in damages. They were asking 1 billion to settle. Ultimately, though, it's up to the jury to award damages if they find for Waymo.
- 1024core 9y agoJudge Alsup questioned why Uber would pay so much to an employee making bogus claims. “To someone like me, an ordinary mortal, and to ordinary mortals out there in the audience — people don’t pay that kind of money for B.S.,” the judge said. Uber’s rationale for the settlement: It would cost less to settle with him than to fight him in court. Also, Mr. Jacobs’s claims could hurt Uber’s reputation, Ms. Padilla testified. I guess it's open season at Uber now? All you have to do is send them a letter with bogus claims, and they'll pay you millions? /s
- Hasz 9y agoI love the line about "hurting Uber's reputation", as if they are the sterling example of honest and ethical company.
- Kalium 9y agoTo most users in most places, there's nothing particularly notable about Uber. They have an unsavory reputation if you move in certain rarefied technical or political circles, but not among the general public. My parents, who are by no means ignorant or uneducated, would be completely unable to comment on why Uber might have a bad reputation.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 9y agoExactly. 99% percent (or more) of Uber users are completely fine with Uber, possibly see Uber as a positive addition to their lives, and if they have any qualms with the company, they are related to specific incidences of bad service or pricing vis-a-vis local competitors rather than any political matters.
- Kalium 9y agoI recently encountered a senior citizen with mobility issues. As far as she's concerned, Uber is the best thing that has happened to her in the past two decades. She no longer has to wait a half hour or more for a taxi that may not show! Total game-changer. She has no idea about some of the aspects of Uber that some may find objectionable.
- abvdasker 9y agoHeadline is pretty misleading. The full quote is "On the surface it looks like you covered this up"
- icebraining 9y agoWhat the difference?
- IkmoIkmo 9y agoWith all these cold winters, on the surface it looks like the earth isn't warming. ... however: yadadada. That's often how an on the surface statement is construed.
- icebraining 9y agoRight, but if you wrote "With all these cold winters, it looks like the earth isn't warming." Wouldn't that pass more-or-less the same message? I don't see how the omission is significant, let alone "pretty misleading".
- macintux 9y ago"on the surface" is used when you're either arguing the opposite or leaving the door open to being wrong because you know there is more to be revealed. "it looks like" can be used in place of a more definitive statement. "on the surface it looks like" is almost never used that way.
- icebraining 9y agoThanks! Not being a native speaker sometimes the nuances escape me.
- bllguo 9y agoI'm a native speaker and I think you're in the right. "On the surface" and "looks like" have effectively equivalent meanings and connotations, at least for me. I don't see how this headline was at all misleading.
- adjkant 9y agoThis is frankly incredible the more that comes out. Paying someone 4.5M in 12 months and then saying everything they claimed is false is some Olympic level gymnastics. I think this level of cover-up is bigger than many reasonable people who thought Uber was guilty expected.
- nasredin 9y agoNonetheless, Uber paid a $3 million settlement to the lawyer who wrote the letter in addition to the $4.5 million paid to Mr. Jacobs. As part of the deal, Mr. Jacobs was kept on as a security consultant, Ms. Padilla testified. His job: investigating the claims made in the letter his lawyer wrote. Mr. Jacobs received $2 million up front and was to receive $1 million spread over 12 months and $1.5 million in stock, also spread out over 12 months. --- I think his job is one of those "I can do this job from home" Fightclub type jobs.
- adambyrtek 9y agoSo they paid him to investigate claims they argue are baseless? That doesn't make any sense.
- tptacek 9y agoIt does not make any sense at all. It does not ring true. It will not ring true to a jury either.
- user5994461 9y agoOn the contrary, it's security done right! There was no evidence of issues, yet they will still have a look to make sure of it.
- DonHopkins 9y agoYou seem incredibly biased. Do you have a dog in this battle? Would you mind revealing your real name and employer, please? Or do you need to stay anonymous? Your relationship with the facts has a familiar ring to it. Kellyanne?
- mcguire 9y ago"She said Uber had planned to fire Mr. Jacobs because its security team had caught him downloading sensitive company information to his personal computer." Well, I guess they'd know how bad that was.
- bitmapbrother 9y agoI would have thought downloading sensitive company information to a personal computer would have been a requirement for employment at Uber.
- TallGuyShort 9y agoAre you perhaps confusing personal computer as in "a small individual workstation" with personal computer as in "a computer not managed by the company's IT policies"? I have to download sensitive stuff to my laptop all the time, but it's a laptop I'm given a computer by IT that has to be secured a certain way and connected to their network. They don't want me having customer details or anything on an actual personally-owned computer.
- hirsin 9y agoPretty sure that was a riff on their employee stealing data from Waymo via personal laptop.
- thaumasiotes 9y agoI wouldn't expect Uber to want its employees working from random personal computers instead of company-issued and -owned ones. Why would you have company information on your personal computer?
- merb 9y agothe other two guys didn't understood you, lol.
- woodandsteel 9y agoSo instead of firing him, much less suing him or reporting him to the police, they decided to pay him 3.5 million dollars, and also hire him as a consultant who could investigate the company and download more sensitive files. Yeah, that makes sense.
- ryguytilidie 9y agoIt seems like the "well, all startups do bad things, Uber is just in the spotlight" crowd has dried up a bit...
- make3 9y agothey've done so much gratuitously evil stuff, the good faith is gone
- notheguyouthink 9y agoIt's always sort of nuts to me how often that excuse comes out for nearly everything. Politics especially. We find out one government official is doing something bad and the response for those on that side of the party line is "everyone does it, don't single this person out!" Perhaps I'm just being overly purist, but I always want to hang them (not literally) AND try to solve the problem. In this case, if it's true than we clearly need more oversight on startups/companies, and we also need to prosecute Uber.
- adjkant 9y agoThis has become a buzzword after its use by John Oliver, but it really is another example of Whataboutism.
- Larrikin 9y agoWhataboutism as a term has been in near constant use on here since Russia was first identified as the the source of meddling in the election last year.
- pm90 9y agoNo its not being a purist at all. Legally, the law doesn't recognize any whataboutism whatsoever (unless its in the specific sense of legal precedents). So you can't argue your innocence in a bank robbery just because another gang also robbed a bank but did not get convicted. The law is pretty clear; its just that most people are not prosecuted for it.
- thisisit 9y agoSeems Uber's solution to every problem - throw money and see it disappear. If it comes back say - well that was not the intention. Threatens to become a whistle blower? Pay the guy 4.5 million and his lawyer 3 million. Stolen data? Pay the hacker to delete data.
- make3 9y agoI mean, in the case of the whistleblower, I'm not sure what you do in this case if you're them aside from this. Which is why there should be a law against this type of behavior. There probably is; I'm a programmer, not a lawyer
- Tyrek 9y agoIn which case you can litigate. If it's baseless, the litigation should be quick, easy and painless. If it's not, then you have other problems.
- csours 9y agoThere are laws against extortion... the problem is, if you go to law enforcement, the item you are being extorted for might become public, even if it is unlawful for it to become public.
- thisisit 9y agoI am sorry but do you mean companies should pay off a whistle-blower rather than say - a. litigate, if the claims are baseless b. In case the claim has substance to try and rectify the issue along with responsible disclosure?
- make3 9y agoif you have reason to think that praying off the guy will work during a huge public image crisis, it would be a very attractive option I'm sure. they should act morally, etc., that's not what I'm saying. I'm trying to extract the raw incentives of the situation
- gpm 9y agoFor anyone interested in reading more about this. You can see the docket, and a lot of the original filings for this case for free via the RECAP project. https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4609586/waymo-llc-v-uber-technologies-inc/?filed_after=&filed_before=&entry_gte=&entry_lte=&order_by=desc https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4609586/waymo-llc-v-ube...
- throw7 9y ago"As part of the deal, Mr. Jacobs was kept on as a security consultant, Ms. Padilla testified. His job: investigating the claims made in the letter his lawyer wrote." Is this a joke? Is this real? I can't even.
- danmaz74 9y agoIt for sure looks unreal.
- tptacek 9y agoThis to me is the most damning part of Uber's response. Can I believe you'd pay low 7 figures to someone extorting your 11-figure firm? Yes. Can I believe you would then, even on paper, retain that person on your security staff? No. What makes much more sense is that the payoff bought off his silence, and that the "position" they offered him was a sop to his conscience.
- forapurpose 9y agoThe "position" might have given them more leverage over his actions: They can control the communications and other actions of an employee, to a significant degree, and as someone investigating the bad behavior, the employee now shares some liability for what Uber does in that regard.
- tptacek 9y agoThis is the kind of thing that makes sense on a message board, but having been a party to a situation in which a former employee (not at one of my companies) made claims which the management team believed to be bogus, the (professional) management of that company did whatever they could to get that employee _as far as they possibly could_ from the operations of the company, _as quickly as they could_. The idea that there was some machievellian scheme to keep this guy on the books in order to monitor him more closely does not ring true at all.
- user5994461 9y ago
- HelloNurse 9y agoDoes Uber risk losing the Waymo trial by default, and not only suffering sanctions along the way, because of this evidence tampering?
- londons_explore 9y agoMy understanding is that this kind of hiding evidence and tampering would not be punished in the current trial. Instead, if it was determined to be criminal behaviour, there would be another follow up criminal trial.
- wglb 9y agoConsider the possibility that the fact that they concealed evidence would be highlighted by the judge to the jury. Thus they may well be punished for it in the current trial.
- gpm 9y ago(IANAL, lay person's understanding). Uber's already admitted to deleting evidence against the rules (previously to this, they claimed it was a mistake). Waymo is asking the judge to order that "adverse inference" be applied to the contents of that evidence, effectively that for the purposes of this trial the jury (and possibly the judge for motions of summary judgement? Not sure but I would expect so) be ordered to assume that evidence say whatever is most beneficial to Waymo, within reason. In an extreme case the judge might order the jury to assume the deleted emails said "Hey, we got all these trade secrets from whatshisname, awesome right". Which would effectively be Waymo winning by default. I'm not sure if there are any other mechanisms that might cause Waymo to win by default (I doubt it), but the above is a real possibility.
- KKKKkkkk1 9y agoI don't want to defend Uber here, but I don't see what this letter business has to do with Waymo's allegedly stolen LIDAR. Why should Uber have disclosed this letter to Waymo? Also, I don't see what's the legal problem with spying on your competitors. I mean, Google and Facebook are spying on their customers, and the law apparently has no problem with that.
- jhall1468 9y ago> Also, I don't see what's the legal problem with spying on your competitors. I mean, Google and Facebook are spying on their customers, and the law apparently has no problem with that. It's not spying, it's doing so illegally. Facebook and Google don't do that. The letter accuses Uber of doing just that, and that's pretty damned relevant in a case where Uber stole trade secrets.
- malandrew 9y ago“I did not believe it was patently illegal,” Jacobs said. “I had questions about the ethics of it. I suppose because of my personal ethics it felt overly aggressive and invasive.” ref: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-28/waymo-trial-delayed-again-with-sharp-words-for-uber-from-judge https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-28/waymo-tri...
- jhall1468 9y agoHe's not a lawyer. The question is a question to debate legally. When something is questionably ethical, whether or not it's legal is dependent on the outcome of a trial. An employee was accusing them of doing something highly unethical and potentially illegal regarding information about competitors. Again, that's incredibly relevant.
- scott_karana 9y ago"Paying a Google employee to steal their designs and sell them to you" is vastly different than regular industrial espionage.
- altern8tif 9y agoI'll be damned if Uber isn't a required case study for business school students in the (near) future. They are fast becoming the Enron of this generation.
- bob_theslob646 9y agoNot even close to the scale of Enron. Even mentioning them in the same sentence is preposterous. First off, Enron was publicly traded. Uber is private. I will just leave this here. >Between 1996 and 2000, Enron's revenues increased by more than 750%, rising from $13.3 billion in 1996 to $100.8 billion in 2000. This extensive expansion of 65% per year was unprecedented in any industry, including the energy industry which typically considered growth of 2–3% per year to be respectable. For just the first nine months of 2001, Enron reported $138.7 billion in revenues, which placed the company at the sixth position on the Fortune Global 500 >the company used accounting limitations to misrepresent earnings and modify the balance sheet to indicate favorable performance
- euyyn 9y agoI'm baffled: If you're going to make up your numbers, why go with something preposterous instead of credible?
- emodendroket 9y agoIt seems like in a lot of these cases, there are plenty of parties who can intuit that something is wrong, but they choose not to dig any deeper because they're happy with the results of the way things are.
- Twirrim 9y agoI wouldn't be surprised if ego entered in to it a little too on the not digging deeper side. "Clearly everyone else in the industry are idiots, or they'd be as profitable as we are".
- karmapolic 9y agowhen is the Uber exodus going to start?
- fstuff 9y agoI think it'll be exodus 2.0. I contracted there until Nov 2016, a few months before the delete uber campaign and Susan Fowler. I kept in contact with some service desk friends and they said after Susan's blog at least 200 people quit right after. Again this is just anecdotal hearsay but I was told another 500 people left a few months later after they collected their yearly bonuses. After bonuses he said maybe 10 to 15 people per week were stopping by the support bar to turn in their laptops on their last day in his building alone. His guess was that at least 800 to 1000 people quit in the first six months of the year. I haven't spoken to him since the end of summer so I don't know how their policy changes, pay bumps, and CEO/ leadership have changed things and if the attrition number slowed. But with this recent news I think this could kick off exodus 2.0.
- kleiba 9y agoWhat's an "intellectual-theft trial"?
- emodendroket 9y agoA trial to determine whether the accused party is guilty of intellectual property theft. I'm not sure what's unclear.
- kleiba 9y agoWell, maybe it's because I'm not a native speaker of English, but since the word "property" isn't part of the expression it wasn't obvious to me.
- emodendroket 9y agoSorry if the comment was excessively snippy, in that case.
- Whitestrake 9y agoWould a trial to determine theft of property normally be called a "theft trial"? I assumed that if that were the case, it would follow logically that an "intellectual theft trial" would be a trial to determine theft of intellectual property. I suppose it might be strange if the former is not common vernacular.
- emodendroket 9y agoIt would be more likely to use the actual crime someone was charged with (e.g., "robbery trial," "larceny trial," etc.) and I think it's rare for legal statutes to have a crime called "theft." But otherwise the form seems normal.
- partycoder 9y agoUber business model is: - Make money willfully violating the law - Use a portion of the money to pay fines, settlements, cover ups. Keep violating the law That's how they expanded to many countries before they were even authorized.
- emodendroket 9y agoYes, although it seems to be catching up with them.
- fstuff 9y agoYou missed a couple steps - hire a PR firm to flood new cities with stories of how g great uber is - build up a huge rider and driver base by offering riders deep discounts and drivers big bonuses - when threaten with regulations email the user base asking them to contact city officials because regulators are stifling innovation and limiting consumer choice... asnd throw in a line about taxis being old and crappy. They did this exactly when it wad announced London banned them.
- partycoder 9y ago> build up a huge rider and driver base by offering riders deep discounts and drivers big bonuses So true. They subsidized rides and operated at a loss just to capture all the market, then backstabbed the drivers to profitability. Now there are drivers below minimum wage.
- londons_explore 9y agoSuccessfully. They're still operating in London.
- likelynew 9y agoWhat. I didn't know that.
- simplyluke 9y agoIn Austin they canvased the city with people literally knocking on doors over a requirement for drivers to be fingerprinted. There was some nuance to it and valid points being made by both the city and Uber but Uber's absolutely over the top response and absolutism turned a lot of residents of the city off of them.
- apeace 9y ago> Thirty-seven pages long, it detailed a list of questionable behavior at Uber, including spying on competitors and using special laptop computers and self-destructing messaging apps that would hide communications. It doesn't seem like a good thing that using self-destructing messaging apps is considered by our court system to be "questionable behavior". It is akin to the argument that using encryption implies guilt.
- btian 9y ago> akin to the argument that using encryption... That's quite a stretch. If you read the document, it says they use self-destructing apps to not leave paper trail. That is akin to saying you used encryption so that DEA won't catch you selling drugs.
- matt4077 9y agoThere's a difference between using such messaging apps in a private vs a business context. Plus, this is civil litigation, where the standard of proof is much weaker, and the absence of exculpatory evidence can and will be used against a party.
- revelation 9y agoIt's a civil suit, the burden of proof is only preponderance of evidence, likely decided by a jury.
- puppetmaster400 9y agoI know of one case where after a subpoena and request for evidence: hard drives were wiped clean and mobile devices were destroyed with a hammer. We can't have it both ways, can we?
- paul7986 9y agoI believe Uber was hacked years ago and knew about it yet did nothing but blame it's users for using a bad password. Case in point in 2014 1K was stolen from my bank account via my Uber account for a ride in London(im in DC). I searched Twitter and saw 10 to 20 ppl a day complaining about the same thing.
- emodendroket 9y agoDid you have your bank account linked to Uber? Is this a common thing to do?
- paul7986 9y agoPayPal
- grahamannett 9y agowow, reminded me of a podcast episode of Reply All where the hosts boss had his account hacked and used by someone abroad. i cant really remember how it ends but they went through a pretty long and arduous process to see if he was hacked or phished and it seemed unlikely to them iirc. i think they talked to some uber PR person who also convinced them there was no way uber was hacked, in retrospect this was a blatant lie.
- ben174 9y agoYes, I know multiple people who had significant money taken from their bank account via Uber.
- MertsA 9y ago>The letter is sealed but the judge said he intends to make it public after hearing any objections. I love this, not only do we get to read the letter, we also get to read Uber's transparent objections beforehand.
- Anil-Shrestha 9y agoAnd Anthony Levandowski will walk a free man?
- woodandsteel 9y agoProbably not, since he is being investigated by federal prosecutors for criminal behavior.