Mark Beach/Fresco News via Bloomberg News
SAN FRANCISCO — Uber and Waymo’s industry-critical battle over self-driving car technology now includes allegations of cover ups, clandestine meetings and big stock payouts. But a court hearing April 3 didn’t result in one possible outcome: A halt to Uber’s self-driving car plans.
In arguments before U.S. District Judge William Alsup, attorneys for both parties laid out their case related to Waymo’s request for a temporary injunction against Uber that would force the ride-hailing company to stop testing its autonomous cars. The day ended without a decision from Alsup.
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Waymo, originally Google’s autonomous vehicle division, has accused one of the best engineers in the field, Anthony Levandowski, of stealing 14,000 documents from it and then moving on to Uber when the ride-hailing company bought Levandowski’s new self-driving truck company, Otto, last summer.
Waymo claims the engineer built his company on the back of its proprietary designs for LiDAR, or light detection and ranging, sensors that let self-driving cars “see” where they are.
Uber has countered that it has never used any such documents in creating its LiDAR. So far, the judge seems unconvinced of Waymo’s allegations.
RELATED: Uber tells court that Otto’s self-driving sensors aren’t stolen from Google
“You have no proof that shows a chain, that shows Levandowski saying ‘Here’s how we did it, here’s how we should do it,'” Alsup told Waymo’s legal team. “What if it turns out that Uber is totally innocent and the worst thing they did was pay a lot of money to buy a brilliant guy from a competitor without realizing that he’d downloaded all this information?”
Legal experts say the burden of proof remains on Waymo to prove Uber was behind a well-orchestrated and clandestine plot to steal its technology.
| By Elizabeth Weise and Marco della Cava USA Today |
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