
Judge orders Uber not to use technology taken from Waymo - abhi3
http://www.seattletimes.com/business/judge-orders-uber-not-to-use-technology-taken-from-waymo/
======
Animats
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.

[1] [https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/velodyne-lidar-enters-
the...](https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/velodyne-lidar-enters-the-no-spin-
zone/) [2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxy08YX0C8w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxy08YX0C8w)
[3] [http://www.tetravue.com/technology/](http://www.tetravue.com/technology/)

~~~
lern_too_spel
The LIDAR is just how Waymo realized some of its technology had been stolen.
Presumably, they want to use discovery to find what else has been stolen.

------
pfarnsworth
Some highlights from the injunction:

1\. "Waymo’s patent theories are too weak to support any provisional relief."

2\. "By contrast, the trade secrets case presented by Waymo does warrant
provisional relief."

3\. "Moreover, it has become clear that Waymo has both overreached in defining
its trade secrets and made moving targets out of its asserted trade secrets to
evade defensive arguments. Under these circumstances and on this record, no
adverse inference that could be drawn in Waymo’s favor would justify
overlooking these problems, pretending that all 121 of Waymo’s asserted trade
secrets are valid, and enjoining defendants from using any of them so as to
effectively halt Uber’s self-driving efforts until trial."

4\. "Waymo is hereby granted further expedited discovery in aid of possible
further provisional relief. Subject to the protective order, and upon
reasonable notice, Waymo’s counsel and one expert may inspect any and all
aspects of defendants’ ongoingwork involving LiDAR — including, without
limitation,schematics, work orders, source code, notes, and emails — whether
or not said work resulted in any prototype or device."

EDIT: one more I forgot, which is interesting:

5\. This order, however, threatens no sanctions against Levandowski. It simply
directs Uber, a private employer, to do whatever it can to ensure that its
employees return 14,000-plus pilfered files to their rightful owner. If Uber
were to threaten Levandowski with termination for noncompliance,that threat
would be backed up by only Uber’s power as a private employer, and Levandowski
would remainfree to forfeit his private employment to preserve his Fifth
Amendment privilege. No binding case law holdsthat the Fifth Amendment
prohibits such actions by private employers. In short, in complying with this
order,Uber has no excuse under the Fifth Amendment to pull any punches as to
Levandowski.

Basically, if Levandowski refuses to turn over the documents, Uber is forced
to fire him, which means the $250,000,000 they already gave him goes up in
smoke.

~~~
manyoso
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.

~~~
pfarnsworth
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.

~~~
kbenson
> 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_like_lamp
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.

------
golfer
Link to the full injunction text:
[https://www.scribd.com/document/348409551/Waymo-Uber-
Injunct...](https://www.scribd.com/document/348409551/Waymo-Uber-
Injunction#from_embed)

~~~
dpiers
"3 pages available to preview"

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.

~~~
bradleyjg
I don't get it either. CNBC has webservers and presumably some sort of in-
house or external CDN. Why host on Scribd?

~~~
fudged71
Embedding

~~~
scott_karana
Haven't all modern browsers embedded PDFs natively for ages, now?

Eg, Chrome in 2010
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome_version_history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome_version_history)

Firefox in 2012 [http://news.softpedia.com/news/PDF-JS-and-Download-
Manager-P...](http://news.softpedia.com/news/PDF-JS-and-Download-Manager-
Panel-Pushed-to-Firefox-15-267154.shtml)

------
greentrust
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.

~~~
jacquesm
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'.

------
tomglynch
How do they go about enforcing this?

~~~
MBCook
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?

~~~
linkregister
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.

------
yeukhon
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.

~~~
vilhelm_s
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.)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14321044](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14321044)

~~~
yeukhon
Thanks, I didn't read that properly. Hopefully truth will come out of criminal
investigation.

------
evanriley
Is this enforceable? Or is it more of a "If you get caught using it in the
future more legal ramifications?"

~~~
abhi3
Violating a judgment would invite contempt proceedings, which means huge fines
for Uber and possible prison for all involved senior executives.

~~~
mediocrejoker
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?

~~~
manyoso
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.

------
delegate
Didn't Uber pay like $680,000,000 for this technology ?

~~~
Dangeranger
Paying for stolen goods doesn't make them your property.

~~~
idbehold
Uber should start a suit against Levandowski.

~~~
yazaddaruvala
Uber should have uncovered this during due diligence. I'm not sure if they can
even sue Levandowski at this point.

~~~
mahyarm
How can you although? Show us what is on every hard drive you ever owned? Uber
doesnt have access to googles internal security logs.

~~~
waisbrot
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.

~~~
mahyarm
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?

------
rimjeilly
if this is all legit, it baffles me that this guy thought he would be able to
'download' anything and take it and not be caught... weird

~~~
Analemma_
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.

------
eddieplan9
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".

~~~
ariwilson
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 :(.

~~~
Kiro
What a strange thing to ask for a completely normal comment. Like it's
unthinkable that someone other than an Uber employee would say it.

