That'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?
Uber 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.
Effectively 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.
The 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.
This 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.
As 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?
I 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.
Sure, 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?
Look at the new discovery that the Judge is allowing Waymo. In effect, Waymo gets to look at all internal LIDAR development at Uber to see if they can find their trade secrets.
Well, 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.
The 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.
In general although, how do you deal with this kind of prove a negative situation?
Hire high level employee X, talking while they are employed with your competitor or not, how do you prove they don't 'copy files' or bring documents with them to their house? Search their house? How do you know they didn't put them in some secret location?
Waymo's alleging they did* - there's a third party due-diligence report prepared by Stroz that both Uber and Levandowski especially are trying really hard to keep from handing over. Levandowski even filed an emergency appeal as a non-party to the case (which was rejected) to be prevented from just naming who it was who prepared the report.
* (Well, Waymo's alleging that the court should make an adverse inference that they did because of Uber's behavior around the report).
Otto was fraud, with Uber's knowledge, right from the beginning. While Levandowski was working at Waymo, he and Kalanick had one of their little nighttime walks where they hashed out the deal: "you take Waymo's stuff, found a throwaway company, and we'll buy it a few months later". Of course, this couldn't be proved in court since there were no records of this deal, but it's absolutely what happened. (EDIT: Note that even Alsup thinks this is what happened, he just didn't think there was enough evidence to take action on it)
Hence, there is no way Uber will sue Levandowski. He'd simply spill the beans and then Uber would be screwed.
> Note that even Alsup thinks this is what happened, he just didn't think there was enough evidence to take action on it
This is only a preliminary injunction. Uber is entitled to the most favorable interpretation of the evidence for this motion. They won't get that later, though.
I think Uber and Levandowski have some sort of agreement that says Uber will defend him in court. In light of this, it would be difficult for Uber to argue they have grounds to sue him.
Well, they said they didn't pay for LiDAR. The company had only existed for a few months; it didn't have a big base of proprietary technology that was worth a bundle. So either the employees were worth hundreds of millions, or Uber was really paying for the stolen documents.
It didn't pay the owner of the technology $680,000,000; if I pay some guy on the street for your house, it doesn't give me the right to sleep there if he doesn't have the right to dispose of your property, no matter how much I pay.
Apparently according to uber not at all, to quote the ruling
> Defendants have also presented an “independent development” narrative in which they developed their own LiDAR technology without using any confidential information from Waymo. That narrative, however, studiously omitted any inquiry into Levandowski’s work, essentially erasing him from the history of Uber’s self-driving car development. Put differently, the record shows Uber bought Levandowski’s services for a tremendous amount of money and positioned him at the forefront of its self-driving car efforts but is barren on how Levandowski has been earning that money and title.
(and later)
> Indeed, defendants have already carefully crafted a narrative of their self-driving car efforts that conspicuously and incredibly denies any meaningful contribution by Levandowski - even though Uber, in a deal worth approximately $680 million dollars, hired him to lead those efforts.
Waymo 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."
Doesn'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.
If Uber turns out to be innocent as they claim, can they then turn around and sue Waymo? The amount of information Waymo has gotten on a competitor through discovery seems highly prejudicial.
The lawsuit isn't really about protecting trade secrets for some soon-to-be-obsolete lidar technology, that's just a convenient tool for punishing Levandowski and Uber for hatching this scheme.
Man I hate Scribd. Why does anyone use it? No, I do not want to download your app to read a PDF, and I don't understand why CNBC published it through your service.
As long as the server sends "Content-Disposition: inline", the browser should use its own PDF renderer (unless it doesn't have one, but I think that's rare these days).
This 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.
Whether 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'.
Wow, 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.
I 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."
You either didn't read the injunction carefully, or you didn't understand it. It's a pretty huge win for Uber.
They don't need to stop working on self-driving cars at all. They just need to ensure Levandowski doesn't work on anything Lidar related, which he already doesn't. The only thing that is potentially a problem for Uber is that they need to use whatever methods to compel Levandowski to hand over the 14,000 documents. If he doesn't, I think the judge's ruling means that they need to fire him, which means the $250,000,000 they paid him goes up in smoke.
You're ignoring a big part of this though: Waymo is given expedited discovery and is allowed to look at Uber's hardware. The injunction says that Uber cannot use Levandowski or any of the work he brought, and so Google['s expert] is allowed to look at Uber's hardware and make sure that none of it is based on the stolen documents.
On the assumption that waymo's claims are true (ie. Uber is basing their work on stolen proprietary designs), this is a major blow to Uber, since they would need to redesign their lidar hardware from the ground up.
Read the injunction. They already went through the design. The judge didn't issue an injunction against using or even continuing development on Uber's Lidar. What more do you expect to find?
If Waymo found a design during expedited discovery that is different from what they submitted to the judge, then I assume that is perjury and obviously needs to be punished to the full extent of the law. I doubt this will happen because everyone knows what's at stake here.
I did. The injunction states that the Fuji lidar may be infringing on trade secrets, the court can't rule and is unwilling got make a prelim injunction, telling Uber to chuck it off a cliff, but will allow expert analysis to confirm. The problem is that Waymo made some overbroad claims and so Alsup is punishing them for it by making the injunciton weaker (and he states as much in footnote 6). That's also what is covered in part 6 of the injunction relief. They are granted additional depositions and analysis of "schematics, work orders, source code, notes, and emails" regarding lidar.
In fact, reading the trade secret infringement part, it reads as though there's no question that levandowski stole documents and that those documents were used to create Uber's lidar using proprietary information from Google. That doesn't bode well.
Edit: Or in other words, Alsup's questions aren't whether or not proprietary info was stolen, but whether or not it is still being actively used.
that last edit you made is a very important distinction, and as far as I understand, the future of the case more or less hinges on waymos ability to prove that stolen info made its way into designs. Its entirely possible that Levandowsky stole some documents intending to use them for a nefarious purpose, but the influence/info from those documents never made it into uber Lidar, at least in a provable way.
> "In fact, reading the trade secret infringement part, it reads as though there's no question that levandowski stole documents and that those documents were used to create Uber's lidar using proprietary information from Google."
If this is your conclusion, then I think you misread what the injunction said. The point of the expedited discovery is to figure out whether or not the documents were used by Uber. The idea that there is "no question" that the documents were used is false.
"Finally, as to whether Uber has used any information enumerated inWaymo’s list of trade secrets, that is the main question on the instant motion. Accordingly,Waymo has received expedited discovery — including an inspection of defendants’ LiDAR devices, document production, and depositions of defendants’ engineers and experts — to shed light on the answer. Insofar as Waymo still falls short of showing use as to certain asserted trade secrets, this order declines to fill the gap with adverse inferences at this stage."
The injunction says that there are "serious questions" but definitely not enough to deserve a preliminary injunction.
"That being said, Waymo has shown at least serious questions going to the merits concerning whether some information within the 14,000-plus downloaded files has been used by defendants and qualifies for trade secret protection"
Again, this is just "serious questions" but there is no smoking gun, and the point of the trial. And don't forget that even the judge says that the discovery could turn up nothing.
"Further discovery may ultimately disprove even Waymo’s revised position that <redacted> is not generally known and economically valuable in the field."
"Again, that Fuji -- and, at least on the record, no other LiDAR -- copies specific GBr3 specifications is striking evidence suggesting that at least some evidence from Waymo's files has already found its way into Uber's Lidar designs."
"At this stage, that is sufficient to extrapolate that at least some of the information in the 14,000-plus downloads likely qualifies for trade secret protection, and certain relief is warranted to prevent the misuse of those downloads as this litigation progresses."
Note that these two quotes are about a separate way that the Fuji likely infringes on the GBr3.
It really does seem like Alsup would have provided further relief if waymo hadn't been so broad in their claims of infringement (again, see footnote 6: "Waymo's inequitable conduct is factored into the relief granted herein")
It seems to generally come down to this:
"For similar reasons, this order also declines, at this stage, to enjoin Uber from using even the specific asserted trade secrets on which Waymo has shown serious questions going to the merits — i.e., Even a limited injunction as to these specific features would impose hardship on Uber’s overall LiDAR development that is disproportionate to Waymo’s limited showing of misappropriation by defendants thus far"
"likely infringes" is absolutely false. Your bias is showing.
There's evidence. But not enough for a preliminary injunction, which is why there's going to be a trial. If there were a smoking gun, then they would have issues a preliminary injunction. And there hasn't even been a question as to whether or not these are trade secrets. That's part of the trial.
1. A preliminary injunction was issued, just not a sweeping one
2. "is striking evidence" is a phrase that to me implies that the Uber lidar likely infringes, please explain if you disagree.
3. Speaking of bias, elsewhere in this thread you say "As far as I can tell from reading the injunction, there wasn't a single case of a trade secret from those documents making its way into Uber's technology." [0]. Given that Alsup believes that Waymo has demonstrated "striking evidence" to the contrary, will you revise that position?
"Striking evidence" is just that. Evidence. I'll wait for the results of the hearing to see what the overall judgement is. Have you forgotten that all trials have evidence both for and against? But the evidence wasn't enough to issue a preliminary injunction, which means that there is no smoking gun.
A preliminary injunction was issues against Levandowski, because as the judge said, there is more than enough evidence to suggest that he downloaded the files. Given the judge's decision, this injunction is a layup and pretty understandable. If the technology he allegedly stole made its way into Uber's technology, it would be an easy decision to give an injunction for Uber to stop development. But the judge even didn't issue a narrow injunction against any development in Lidar whatsoever. So that speaks volumes. Not winning a preliminary injunction is pretty huge.
>Evidence. I'll wait for the results of the hearing to see what the overall judgement is. Have you forgotten that all trials have evidence both for and against? But the evidence wasn't enough to issue a preliminary injunction, which means that there is no smoking gun.
Yes there was, that's what this document is.
>A preliminary injunction was issues against Levandowski
No, a preliminary injunction was issues against Uber preventing Levandowski from working on things. As far as the court is concerned, Levandowski isn't a party in this case. To be clear, this Order is an injunction against Uber, no one else. That's the way the court sees it (and this has been made pretty clear in prior arguments).
There was enough evidence to issue a preliminary injunction against uber, just not one that required them to stop working on lidar completely. This is despite what Alsup says at the end of page 12, which I read as being the main reason (and again, alsup clearly states this in footnote six) that the injunctive relief isn't stronger. Or in other words, Alsup was, based on the evidence provided, willing to place a stronger injunction against Uber, but has not as a way to 'punish' Waymo for overreaching in some of its claims.
I'd take some time to read section D. It pretty clearly explains all of this (basically, Waymo asked for the court to account for Adverse Interference to make a stronger judgement, and the court denied because Waymo was also misbehaving).
Btw, how do they prevent "reverse theft" here? When Google looks at Uber designs, couldnt they learn from them and incorporate the learnings back into their designs?
Regardless of whether Uber's design is using some of Waymo's design concepts -- I am sure there will be a lot of different aspects in Uber's designs some of which could be useful for Waymo.
Elsewhere in the thread its been explained that "google get's to look at Uber's Lidar" is really "Google's lawyers and some non-employee experts get to look at Uber's Lidar". Essentially its Chinese walled, your average Waymo engineer (in fact probably every waymo engineer) isn't going to see the documents.
Not to discount HN legal experts, but nowhere is third-party examination mentioned in the document. "Waymo attorney" and "Waymo expert" are the terms used.
Edit: I don't think there's much risk of this. It's illegal enough that I doubt an individual engineer would risk prison over the corporation they happened to work for.
Right, waymo attorney is what it is, but waymo expert does not imply waymo employee (much like waymo attorney doesn't necessarily imply waymo employee either)
Remember, though, that this is just a preliminary injunction. Waymo could get considerably more as the case goes on, they're just going to have to work harder to get it.
It's only hacker news, don't get so worked up. People are allowed to disagree with you regardless of what you feel your best intentions are. Why do you care what anonymous internet people think?
But I do agree with media bias. The main case was "Injunction". Not a case against Anthony. "Actual case" was Waymo seeking protection for what they claim 121 trade secrets and hence prevent Uber from dong self driving tests.
Specifically on that Judge ruled following
“General approaches dictated by well-known principles of physics, however, are not “secret,” since they consist essentially of general engineering principles that are simply part of the intellectual equipment of technical employees,”
This clearly shows that Judge believed Waymo over-reached when asking for injuction.
Journalists dont find it saucy. So they are just quoting the parts about Anthony downloading files and skipping the above excerpt.
This. Make some company out to be the boogeyman du jour, then tell that lie often enough until most people believe it and it has spread all the way around the world with no chance of the truth catching up. It's bullshit, and I'm amazed that so many HNers that typically express healthy skepticism fall for it.
While I agree there is a bias in the media regarding Uber, that didn't form in a vacuum. There have been numerous fairly bad missteps from the company. I think it's less a case of the media steering the public as is is the media conforming to public opinion in some cases and showing the public what it expects, since the public is getting a fairly bad impression of Uber, and that's not entirely because of how the media has presented the stories.
Selectively quoting only stuff about Engineer and not quoting anything on actual injunction (which is a win for uber) seems like steering towards a negative narrative against Uber.
Again we can dislike Uber's policies etc. But journalist also needs to lay out facts as they are. Not actually try to steer the argument in one direction.
> Selectively quoting only stuff about Engineer and not quoting anything on actual injunction (which is a win for uber) seems like steering towards a negative narrative against Uber.
In my opinion, calling any of this a win for Uber is a bit of a stretch. If there were no court case, Uber would be entirely unrestricted. Waymo asked for a lot of restrictions, and was granted relatively little. That's better than it could have been for Uber, but still not as good as no injunctions. It's a "win" in the same way that if someone mugged me and only took my inexpensive watch instead of my wallet and smartphone I would have "won". Sure, it could have been worse, but calling it a win seems odd to me. It only makes sense when you narrow your scope to the battle, instead of the war, and to my eyes puts it in the realm of propaganda. I much prefer "good for Uber" or "bad for Uber" or "better than widely expected".
That said, it doesn't change my earlier point at all. If at this point the public is very receptive to and feeds off more evidence of Uber's wrongdoing, then playing to that by the media is to be expected (if still to be condemned). Uber, because of its entire business model is based on disruption that different people see as extremely positive or extremely negative, likely never had a chance at being represented in an unbiased way. In the beginning, that bias probably went both ways. As time has gone on, there's been more negative news to feed to the the thresher than positive, and at this point it's a feedback loop.
1. why are you posting on a new account? it is obvious by your edit that you post regularly on here.
2. the article has mostly the same exact info you've posted. what "extreme media bias" are you talking about?
3. you write that their trade secret claims are an "overreach" yet that is only half the story. the judge thought most of the claims were weak, but that there was sufficient evidence to issue the injunction. so there were valid trade secret claims.
> Uber likely knew or at least should have known that Levandowski had taken and retained possession of Waymo’s confidential files. Waymo has also sufficiently shown, 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.
So why don't you reveal yourself and explain why you are so pro-Uber? Because it seems likely you have something to hide.
1) I don't post with my account in flamewar topics because of fanboy downvotes.
2) The article omits pretty much any important detail that is in favor of this boogeyman company so readers assume the absolute worst. Check out pfarnsworth's comments here to see that this is actually a ruling very much in Uber's favor. He did a better job of commenting than me.
I'm also pro-Apple, pro-Monsanto, pro-Facebook and pro-every-other-company journalists love to hate and only tell one side of the story because I've personally seen my company maligned unfairly by the media.
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.
I 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.
I disagree. It's only good if they find something, which to me is doubtful given the fact they didn't find something already, and given the fact that the judge didn't issue a single injunction against Uber for trade secrets. As far as I can tell from reading the injunction, there wasn't a single case of a trade secret from those documents making its way into Uber's technology.
The fact that none of the technology made it into their Lidar designs makes it hard to believe that anything will be found. The idea that somehow discovery will determine there was something stolen seems pretty low at this point.
I agree that the order to compel returning the documents is interesting, and to me potentially the most "damaging" if they are forced to fire Levandowski.
It isn't just the order to return the documents. Uber is compelled by June 23rd for a complete and chronological record of everyone at Uber or on behalf of Uber who discussed LIDAR with Anthony and what they talked about. They have to question all of these people about knowledge about those 14,000 files and contents.
Under oath. How many employees do you think that is? How many people?
If Anthony discussed these 14,000 files with anyone - which is not a stretch to think that he has - then they have to admit it under oath or deny it under oath. You think others are going to want to perjure themselves for Uber?
You're presuming that they will find something. I'm presuming they won't. None of the technology made it into Uber's Lidar design, and already no evidence was found that a single document made its way into Uber's servers. Remember, they already went through a round of discovery and they found nothing. The idea that Levandowski would be telling people "Well, from Google's documents, I remember x y z" sounds awfully ridiculous.
I think the Judge is very clearly signaling that if any pilfered files were used by Uber that he is intent on getting to the bottom of it. And that all the claims of privilege that Uber has been claiming so far in the expedited discovery is about to go bye bye.
The head of research on LIDAR at Uber had 14,000 files from Google that were pilfered before he left and he did this for purely for shits and giggles and not in any way to use these files for anything in his future job? The Judge says in the order it is preposterous to think this. Still, it is up to Google to prove misuse and he is intent on giving them the discovery they need to do so if they can.
The narrative of Levandowski's theft of the documents is premature. If you read the forensic examiner's report, it amounts to "checked out project using TortoiseSVN, plugged in a USB device, installed proprietary Google Linux distribution." The "wiped" adjective is inaccurate since a disk format is required to install Linux. Levandowski didn't zero the hard drive or anything like that. There's no evidence yet that Waymo files touched anyone's personal device.
That said, on pages 13-15 of the injunction document, Judge Alsop sees clear influence of trade secrets in the design of the Lidar's PCB. This is the damning portion that lead to the injunction.
> The fact that none of the technology made it into their Lidar designs makes it hard to believe that anything will be found.
This is a bit confusing. If none of the technology made it into their designs, why was a manufacturer delivering a part proprietary to Google to them? That's my understanding of what kicked this whole thing off, Google being accidentally CC'd by a manufacturer for a purchase of a part that nobody else should have known about. If that's correct, while it doesn't necessarily mean that Google tech was utilized in some integral component, it does signal that they weren't averse to using that tech in some fashion.
I'm left wondering if the real meat of this case is to be found as Google examines the hardware, which it sounds like they've now been given the go ahead to do.
I don't work in hardware, but a friend of mine who does said that it's not really all that surprising for two companies to end up with similar designs if they are working on a similar problem AND are using the same supplier. The supplier is providing their own expertise and some of that expertise comes from working with other customers.
I think we read the injunction differently. On pages 13-15, Judge Alsop states that he found two instances of what he thought was obvious influence of trade secrets.
I agree that this was Alsop's backhanded way of getting Uber to fire Levandowski; either Levandowski will reveal the documents and face prison, or he never had them on personal devices and Uber still has to fire him because he didn't produce them.
And if Levandowsky genuinely doesn't have the documents? After finally taking the time to read the forensic testimony myself, I found it very inconclusive. Yes, he may have taken the documents or he may not have. The evidence presented in the testimony was far from being a smoking gun. I highly encourage others to read the testimony for themselves and come to their own conclusion.
Returning the files proves he has them. This isn't restitution, it's a play for an employer to skirt the 5th amendment. While he will not be forced to testify against himself, his employment is now tied to his willingness to do so.
You could also look at it through a different lens. It seems that the scope of possible harm has been reduced from "everyone must stop working on SDCs" to "maybe you might need to let the Levandowsky guy go, and stop making your own lidar".
Also, from what I understand, the real benefit to uber was from Levandowsky bringing 100 former google eng with him to bootstrap uber SDC project. Well, those 100 eng are at uber now, or maybe they've moved on, but point being the damage is done, and you can't undo that.
Waymo wants uber SDC shut down, they feel robbed, and anything less than that in their view is not justice.
"It seems that the scope of possible harm has been reduced..."
The Judge specifically says in the ruling that a much stronger injunction can come at any point right up to the start of trial if Google is able to find additional evidence in the new discovery he is ordering. My read of the ruling is that the Judge expects that Google is likely to find just such evidence in the discovery he is newly ordering.
The 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".
>>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."
Wow 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"?
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)
And 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.
That isn't quite the same as "Uber took technology from Waymo", though.
Levandowski took a bunch of stuff from Waymo. There seems to be very little doubt of that. Levandowski, while in possession of those documents, formed Otto. Uber bought Otto. Therefore, Uber bought a company that included a person who stole a bunch of documents from Waymo.
Now: Did Uber get access to the documents? Did Levandowski not show them the documents, but just use the contents to give guidance/instructions/knowledge? Either of those would be "Uber taking the technology".
Or did Levandowski just put those files away on a drive somewhere, and never use them while at Otto or Uber? I don't believe that for a minute, but it's possible (from the evidence so far).
Are you an Uber employee? Curious for full disclosure.
I'm an Alphabet employee but not one working on Waymo-related projects, nor am I a lawyer who feels qualified to comment on this situation. Wish Groklaw was still around to interpret these rulings for us :(.
Are you demanding the same standard from commenters whose comment screams Google, Waymo, Lyft or Tesla employee?
I agree with you that Uber employees should divulge their affiliation, but so should those with a conflict of interest against Uber.
Edit: thank you for editing your comment (after I replied with mine) to divulge that you're an alphabet employee. Your behavior is commendable.
Edit 2: seriously?! A comment expecting people on both sides to disclose their affiliations was flagged?
Contrary, it says that Uber either knew or should have known that he took those 14,000 files and that undoubtedly those files were used by Uber to develop LIDAR. It says that Waymo has shown evidence of trade secret misuse enough to grant provisional relief.
It is not a knock out blow against Uber, but look at the relief granted with regard to more discover. Uber has to do a complete accounting of everyone who talked to Lewandowsky about LIDAR and the contents and dates of those conversations. They have to get every employee under oath saying whether they used any info or knew of any info in those 14,000 files.
In short, Uber didn't get knocked out by this order, but it certainly sets them up for getting knocked out as the Judge clearly is interested in getting to the bottom of this.
If evidence exists that Uber knew of or used information in those 14,000 files ... the Judge and Waymo are determined to find it. I think that is bad for Uber know matter how you look at it.
It says nothing about trade secret _misuse_ but alsip does discuss trade secret theft, which is an important distinction. So far, there is no evidence that Uber has used any waymo trade secrets in their SDC program, and if there was any evidence the program would have been shut down BUT there is significant evidence that Levandowsky did steal a treasure trove of documents as he was on his way out the door.
What the ruling does show is that Levandowsky is considered to be toxic, and will not be allowed to work at uber on any programs that he may have stolen trade secrets for.
It is entirely possible that Levandowsky downloaded the 14k files for his use, but they never impacted the designs at uber, at least in a legally provable form.
I am not familiar enough with case law in this arena to know the legal intricacies but my initial reaction is that, while uber is not off the hook, the potential damage they may receive as an outcome of this has has been reduced immensely (shut down entire program => remove head exec running program) when compared with the rhetoric before this injunction was released.
In the expedited discovery done so far Uber has claimed privilege for huge amounts of requested documents. If you read the order, the Judge is signaling that this isn't going to be allowed to continue. One of the reasons he turned down the adverse inference is basically that he expects discovery going forward to favor Waymo and the adverse inference question is not necessary to decide now.
The ruling in general gives the definite impression that the Judge is very interested in seeing the evidence one way or another whether stolen tech was used by Uber and claims of privilege and 5th amendment will be greatly hindered going forward.
IME, 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.
How 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.
This 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.)
Check 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.
Levandowski 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.
133 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] threadUber 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.
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?
> 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.
Hire high level employee X, talking while they are employed with your competitor or not, how do you prove they don't 'copy files' or bring documents with them to their house? Search their house? How do you know they didn't put them in some secret location?
* (Well, Waymo's alleging that the court should make an adverse inference that they did because of Uber's behavior around the report).
Hence, there is no way Uber will sue Levandowski. He'd simply spill the beans and then Uber would be screwed.
This is only a preliminary injunction. Uber is entitled to the most favorable interpretation of the evidence for this motion. They won't get that later, though.
> Defendants have also presented an “independent development” narrative in which they developed their own LiDAR technology without using any confidential information from Waymo. That narrative, however, studiously omitted any inquiry into Levandowski’s work, essentially erasing him from the history of Uber’s self-driving car development. Put differently, the record shows Uber bought Levandowski’s services for a tremendous amount of money and positioned him at the forefront of its self-driving car efforts but is barren on how Levandowski has been earning that money and title.
(and later)
> Indeed, defendants have already carefully crafted a narrative of their self-driving car efforts that conspicuously and incredibly denies any meaningful contribution by Levandowski - even though Uber, in a deal worth approximately $680 million dollars, hired him to lead those efforts.
"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."
I mean, seriously, they've just been granted a shit load of access to their biggest competitors secrets. Pray they don't abuse that...
Man I hate Scribd. Why does anyone use it? No, I do not want to download your app to read a PDF, and I don't understand why CNBC published it through your service.
Eg, Chrome in 2010 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome_version_history
Firefox in 2012 http://news.softpedia.com/news/PDF-JS-and-Download-Manager-P...
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.
"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."
They don't need to stop working on self-driving cars at all. They just need to ensure Levandowski doesn't work on anything Lidar related, which he already doesn't. The only thing that is potentially a problem for Uber is that they need to use whatever methods to compel Levandowski to hand over the 14,000 documents. If he doesn't, I think the judge's ruling means that they need to fire him, which means the $250,000,000 they paid him goes up in smoke.
You're ignoring a big part of this though: Waymo is given expedited discovery and is allowed to look at Uber's hardware. The injunction says that Uber cannot use Levandowski or any of the work he brought, and so Google['s expert] is allowed to look at Uber's hardware and make sure that none of it is based on the stolen documents.
On the assumption that waymo's claims are true (ie. Uber is basing their work on stolen proprietary designs), this is a major blow to Uber, since they would need to redesign their lidar hardware from the ground up.
If Waymo found a design during expedited discovery that is different from what they submitted to the judge, then I assume that is perjury and obviously needs to be punished to the full extent of the law. I doubt this will happen because everyone knows what's at stake here.
In fact, reading the trade secret infringement part, it reads as though there's no question that levandowski stole documents and that those documents were used to create Uber's lidar using proprietary information from Google. That doesn't bode well.
Edit: Or in other words, Alsup's questions aren't whether or not proprietary info was stolen, but whether or not it is still being actively used.
If this is your conclusion, then I think you misread what the injunction said. The point of the expedited discovery is to figure out whether or not the documents were used by Uber. The idea that there is "no question" that the documents were used is false.
The injunction says that there are "serious questions" but definitely not enough to deserve a preliminary injunction. Again, this is just "serious questions" but there is no smoking gun, and the point of the trial. And don't forget that even the judge says that the discovery could turn up nothing."At this stage, that is sufficient to extrapolate that at least some of the information in the 14,000-plus downloads likely qualifies for trade secret protection, and certain relief is warranted to prevent the misuse of those downloads as this litigation progresses."
Note that these two quotes are about a separate way that the Fuji likely infringes on the GBr3.
It really does seem like Alsup would have provided further relief if waymo hadn't been so broad in their claims of infringement (again, see footnote 6: "Waymo's inequitable conduct is factored into the relief granted herein")
It seems to generally come down to this:
"For similar reasons, this order also declines, at this stage, to enjoin Uber from using even the specific asserted trade secrets on which Waymo has shown serious questions going to the merits — i.e., Even a limited injunction as to these specific features would impose hardship on Uber’s overall LiDAR development that is disproportionate to Waymo’s limited showing of misappropriation by defendants thus far"
There's evidence. But not enough for a preliminary injunction, which is why there's going to be a trial. If there were a smoking gun, then they would have issues a preliminary injunction. And there hasn't even been a question as to whether or not these are trade secrets. That's part of the trial.
2. "is striking evidence" is a phrase that to me implies that the Uber lidar likely infringes, please explain if you disagree.
3. Speaking of bias, elsewhere in this thread you say "As far as I can tell from reading the injunction, there wasn't a single case of a trade secret from those documents making its way into Uber's technology." [0]. Given that Alsup believes that Waymo has demonstrated "striking evidence" to the contrary, will you revise that position?
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14342469
A preliminary injunction was issues against Levandowski, because as the judge said, there is more than enough evidence to suggest that he downloaded the files. Given the judge's decision, this injunction is a layup and pretty understandable. If the technology he allegedly stole made its way into Uber's technology, it would be an easy decision to give an injunction for Uber to stop development. But the judge even didn't issue a narrow injunction against any development in Lidar whatsoever. So that speaks volumes. Not winning a preliminary injunction is pretty huge.
Yes there was, that's what this document is.
>A preliminary injunction was issues against Levandowski
No, a preliminary injunction was issues against Uber preventing Levandowski from working on things. As far as the court is concerned, Levandowski isn't a party in this case. To be clear, this Order is an injunction against Uber, no one else. That's the way the court sees it (and this has been made pretty clear in prior arguments).
There was enough evidence to issue a preliminary injunction against uber, just not one that required them to stop working on lidar completely. This is despite what Alsup says at the end of page 12, which I read as being the main reason (and again, alsup clearly states this in footnote six) that the injunctive relief isn't stronger. Or in other words, Alsup was, based on the evidence provided, willing to place a stronger injunction against Uber, but has not as a way to 'punish' Waymo for overreaching in some of its claims.
I'd take some time to read section D. It pretty clearly explains all of this (basically, Waymo asked for the court to account for Adverse Interference to make a stronger judgement, and the court denied because Waymo was also misbehaving).
Regardless of whether Uber's design is using some of Waymo's design concepts -- I am sure there will be a lot of different aspects in Uber's designs some of which could be useful for Waymo.
Edit: I don't think there's much risk of this. It's illegal enough that I doubt an individual engineer would risk prison over the corporation they happened to work for.
* > If this is your conclusion, *
// ^ remove the space between the asterisk and the text
Those on mobile or who don't want to scroll far thank you.
“General approaches dictated by well-known principles of physics, however, are not “secret,” since they consist essentially of general engineering principles that are simply part of the intellectual equipment of technical employees,” This clearly shows that Judge believed Waymo over-reached when asking for injuction.
Journalists dont find it saucy. So they are just quoting the parts about Anthony downloading files and skipping the above excerpt.
Selectively quoting only stuff about Engineer and not quoting anything on actual injunction (which is a win for uber) seems like steering towards a negative narrative against Uber.
Again we can dislike Uber's policies etc. But journalist also needs to lay out facts as they are. Not actually try to steer the argument in one direction.
In my opinion, calling any of this a win for Uber is a bit of a stretch. If there were no court case, Uber would be entirely unrestricted. Waymo asked for a lot of restrictions, and was granted relatively little. That's better than it could have been for Uber, but still not as good as no injunctions. It's a "win" in the same way that if someone mugged me and only took my inexpensive watch instead of my wallet and smartphone I would have "won". Sure, it could have been worse, but calling it a win seems odd to me. It only makes sense when you narrow your scope to the battle, instead of the war, and to my eyes puts it in the realm of propaganda. I much prefer "good for Uber" or "bad for Uber" or "better than widely expected".
That said, it doesn't change my earlier point at all. If at this point the public is very receptive to and feeds off more evidence of Uber's wrongdoing, then playing to that by the media is to be expected (if still to be condemned). Uber, because of its entire business model is based on disruption that different people see as extremely positive or extremely negative, likely never had a chance at being represented in an unbiased way. In the beginning, that bias probably went both ways. As time has gone on, there's been more negative news to feed to the the thresher than positive, and at this point it's a feedback loop.
2. the article has mostly the same exact info you've posted. what "extreme media bias" are you talking about?
3. you write that their trade secret claims are an "overreach" yet that is only half the story. the judge thought most of the claims were weak, but that there was sufficient evidence to issue the injunction. so there were valid trade secret claims.
> Uber likely knew or at least should have known that Levandowski had taken and retained possession of Waymo’s confidential files. Waymo has also sufficiently shown, 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.
So why don't you reveal yourself and explain why you are so pro-Uber? Because it seems likely you have something to hide.
It helps that Google employs about 10x as many people as Uber does. Its the same reason you see lots of Microsoft SWEs here.
2) The article omits pretty much any important detail that is in favor of this boogeyman company so readers assume the absolute worst. Check out pfarnsworth's comments here to see that this is actually a ruling very much in Uber's favor. He did a better job of commenting than me.
I'm also pro-Apple, pro-Monsanto, pro-Facebook and pro-every-other-company journalists love to hate and only tell one side of the story because I've personally seen my company maligned unfairly by the media.
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.
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.
The fact that none of the technology made it into their Lidar designs makes it hard to believe that anything will be found. The idea that somehow discovery will determine there was something stolen seems pretty low at this point.
I agree that the order to compel returning the documents is interesting, and to me potentially the most "damaging" if they are forced to fire Levandowski.
Under oath. How many employees do you think that is? How many people?
If Anthony discussed these 14,000 files with anyone - which is not a stretch to think that he has - then they have to admit it under oath or deny it under oath. You think others are going to want to perjure themselves for Uber?
The head of research on LIDAR at Uber had 14,000 files from Google that were pilfered before he left and he did this for purely for shits and giggles and not in any way to use these files for anything in his future job? The Judge says in the order it is preposterous to think this. Still, it is up to Google to prove misuse and he is intent on giving them the discovery they need to do so if they can.
That said, on pages 13-15 of the injunction document, Judge Alsop sees clear influence of trade secrets in the design of the Lidar's PCB. This is the damning portion that lead to the injunction.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14261591
There's a link to the testimony in that topmost comment too for those that want to read it for themselves.
This is a bit confusing. If none of the technology made it into their designs, why was a manufacturer delivering a part proprietary to Google to them? That's my understanding of what kicked this whole thing off, Google being accidentally CC'd by a manufacturer for a purchase of a part that nobody else should have known about. If that's correct, while it doesn't necessarily mean that Google tech was utilized in some integral component, it does signal that they weren't averse to using that tech in some fashion.
I'm left wondering if the real meat of this case is to be found as Google examines the hardware, which it sounds like they've now been given the go ahead to do.
I agree that this was Alsop's backhanded way of getting Uber to fire Levandowski; either Levandowski will reveal the documents and face prison, or he never had them on personal devices and Uber still has to fire him because he didn't produce them.
Also, from what I understand, the real benefit to uber was from Levandowsky bringing 100 former google eng with him to bootstrap uber SDC project. Well, those 100 eng are at uber now, or maybe they've moved on, but point being the damage is done, and you can't undo that.
Waymo wants uber SDC shut down, they feel robbed, and anything less than that in their view is not justice.
The Judge specifically says in the ruling that a much stronger injunction can come at any point right up to the start of trial if Google is able to find additional evidence in the new discovery he is ordering. My read of the ruling is that the Judge expects that Google is likely to find just such evidence in the discovery he is newly ordering.
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."
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)
You have a point in general, but it is some of specifics of this case that raise doubts about whether that is the whole story.
Levandowski took a bunch of stuff from Waymo. There seems to be very little doubt of that. Levandowski, while in possession of those documents, formed Otto. Uber bought Otto. Therefore, Uber bought a company that included a person who stole a bunch of documents from Waymo.
Now: Did Uber get access to the documents? Did Levandowski not show them the documents, but just use the contents to give guidance/instructions/knowledge? Either of those would be "Uber taking the technology".
Or did Levandowski just put those files away on a drive somewhere, and never use them while at Otto or Uber? I don't believe that for a minute, but it's possible (from the evidence so far).
I'm an Alphabet employee but not one working on Waymo-related projects, nor am I a lawyer who feels qualified to comment on this situation. Wish Groklaw was still around to interpret these rulings for us :(.
I agree with you that Uber employees should divulge their affiliation, but so should those with a conflict of interest against Uber.
Edit: thank you for editing your comment (after I replied with mine) to divulge that you're an alphabet employee. Your behavior is commendable.
Edit: thank you for editing your comment (after I replied with mine) to divulge that you're an alphabet employee. Your behavior is commendable.
Edit 2: seriously?! A comment expecting people on both sides to disclose their affiliations was flagged?
It is not a knock out blow against Uber, but look at the relief granted with regard to more discover. Uber has to do a complete accounting of everyone who talked to Lewandowsky about LIDAR and the contents and dates of those conversations. They have to get every employee under oath saying whether they used any info or knew of any info in those 14,000 files.
In short, Uber didn't get knocked out by this order, but it certainly sets them up for getting knocked out as the Judge clearly is interested in getting to the bottom of this.
If evidence exists that Uber knew of or used information in those 14,000 files ... the Judge and Waymo are determined to find it. I think that is bad for Uber know matter how you look at it.
It says nothing about trade secret _misuse_ but alsip does discuss trade secret theft, which is an important distinction. So far, there is no evidence that Uber has used any waymo trade secrets in their SDC program, and if there was any evidence the program would have been shut down BUT there is significant evidence that Levandowsky did steal a treasure trove of documents as he was on his way out the door.
What the ruling does show is that Levandowsky is considered to be toxic, and will not be allowed to work at uber on any programs that he may have stolen trade secrets for.
It is entirely possible that Levandowsky downloaded the 14k files for his use, but they never impacted the designs at uber, at least in a legally provable form.
I am not familiar enough with case law in this arena to know the legal intricacies but my initial reaction is that, while uber is not off the hook, the potential damage they may receive as an outcome of this has has been reduced immensely (shut down entire program => remove head exec running program) when compared with the rhetoric before this injunction was released.
The ruling in general gives the definite impression that the Judge is very interested in seeing the evidence one way or another whether stolen tech was used by Uber and claims of privilege and 5th amendment will be greatly hindered going forward.
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
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... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxy08YX0C8w [3] http://www.tetravue.com/technology/