
Judge blasts Waymo v. Uber lawyers, delays trial until December - aetherson
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/judge-blasts-waymo-v-uber-lawyers-delays-trial-until-december/
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aetherson
A lot of commentators here were suggesting that the due diligence report was
strong evidence for Waymo's case, but I think that Judge Alsup is strongly
suggesting that it's not: they're still crucially missing evidence that
supports the case that Levandowski's bad actions made it to Uber.

~~~
sjbase
Indeed, however he's also suggesting that said evidence is missing under very
suspicious circumstances:

> "That the most important witness in the case [Levandowski], somehow his own
> files got overlooked. That's very suspicious."

Is he not implicating Uber in that, or at the very least Uber's legal counsel?

~~~
aetherson
My read is that all of this bad behavior on the part of Levandowski (and
Kalanick) and so forth will be extremely damaging _if_ Google can come up with
some kind of evidence that Uber is actually using some of its trade secrets.

Like, if Uber had a prototype that was clearly very closely related to
Google's prototype, then it would be very hard for Uber to credibly suggest
that the similarities are just coincidence, that there was parallel evolution
or something. But without a link to something that Uber actually produced or
used, what Google has is an iron-clad case that Levandowski took their IP and
acted like a douchebag, and an iron-clad case that Uber was at least
retroactively aware of that, and very little case that Uber took their
technology.

~~~
drawnwren
This case was started when Google discovered that Uber's Spider prototype was
identical to an early Google lidar. It now appears that they haven't been
using it primarily, but your hypothetical smoking gun is literally the
foundation of this case.

~~~
Natsu
Do you know of any place with actual transcripts of the entire hearing?

My reading of the article was that they'd dropped patents from the case
entirely, but that quote might have been misleading.

~~~
drawnwren
I don't. I do remember Judge Alsup raised concerns about Waymo being able to
show damages from these patent infringements a while ago. I believe that this
was part of the reason that Waymo revised their claims, and might point to why
the spider prototype isn't as much of a smoking gun as we expect.

------
zymhan
> "Well, you only need three of the lawyers over there to try this case,"
> Alsup said, gesturing to Uber's table full of attorneys. "We will miss you
> greatly. I was looking forward to seeing you perform in this case. But next
> time, maybe you ought to produce the documents."

Judge Alsup is a badass.

~~~
redthrowaway
How is it that Alsup ended up with both of these high profile cases?

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nraynaud
is just because he works in the area where tech companies have their
headquarters?

~~~
theduncan
Also Judges can request cases, and it might be that since he understands what
the tech mumbo jumbo is, he got the case.

~~~
vqc
Really? I didn't know federal judges can request cases. Is that specifically a
N.D. Cal. thing? I always thought cases were randomly assigned to a judge in
the relevant district.

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smnrchrds
> Levandowski, who is not a defendant in the case, hasn't answered questions
> about the allegations, instead pleading the Fifth Amendment.

Fifth Amendment only applies to criminal proceedings, not civil case. How can
he refuse to answer questions based on the Fifth?

~~~
btilly
The Fifth Amendment applies to statements which could conceivably show up in a
future criminal proceeding. Here is a more precise statement of the principle:

 _A witness has traditionally been able to claim the privilege in any
proceeding whatsoever in which testimony is legally required when his answer
might be used against him in that proceeding or in a future criminal
proceeding or when it might be exploited to uncover other evidence against
him._

And for references see
[http://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment5/annotation07.html...](http://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment5/annotation07.html#f177)

~~~
euyyn
What mechanism prevents people from applying it all the time in all cases,
referring to potential "future criminal proceedings"?

~~~
btilly
If the judge gets suspicious, you'll have to explain the potential issue to
him off the record. After that you can only continue to say it if the judge
thinks that you have a potential reason for worry. But they err on the side of
respecting it.

That said, a defendant who pleads the fifth at all questions will not
necessarily help their case...

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bogomipz
Can someone more familiar with the case say what is the "Stroz report"?

