Waymo vs. Uber trial date postponed to December
A judge overseeing the lawsuit between Waymo and Uber has granted the Alphabet subsidiary’s request for a delay in the trial. Waymo had requested more time to review a recently unsealed report detailing Uber’s acquisition of the self-driving truck startup Otto. That report is now at the center of Waymo’s allegations that Uber knowingly accepted stolen trade secrets to fuel its driverless car effort.
The trial will now start December 4th, and is expected to last a little over two weeks — though Judge William Alsup said he would ask the jury to keep the week of January 8th open as well, in case it runs long.
The delayed trial date was a win for Alphabet, which had sought more time to review new evidence. "We welcome the Court's ruling,” a Waymo spokesperson said. “Since filing this case, Waymo has confirmed that Uber acquired Anthony Levandowski's company while knowing he had taken and retained massive amounts of confidential Waymo information, and we have uncovered significant evidence that Uber is in fact using Waymo trade secrets in its technology. New evidence continues to come to light through thousands of documents and hundreds of previously unexamined devices that Defendants are only now turning over. We are reviewing these materials and look forward to presenting our case at trial."
But in his ruling, Alsup seemed to suggest that Waymo may be disappointed by what it finds in the due diligence report that Uber had fought so hard to keep hidden.
He suggests evidence dealing w/period before Uber acquired Otto— including the Stroz report, which dropped last night—won't be v relevant
— Aarian Marshall (@AarianMarshall) October 3, 2017
An Uber spokesperson highlighted Alsup’s misgivings. “The Court has made clear that Waymo's case is not what they hoped, and that more time will not change the hard fact that their trade secrets never came to Uber,” the spokesperson said “We're ready to go to trial now, and will be ready after this very brief continuance."
To be sure, the report paints an unflattering picture of Uber, its former CEO Travis Kalanick, and Anthony Levandowski, the self-driving car engineer whose decision to leave Google and found Otto — and then sell out to Uber — sparked this entire, sordid legal drama. As The Verge’s Sarah Jeong reported earlier:
The report describes, for instance, [Uber] employees caught in lies in their interviews with [cybersecurity firm] Stroz investigators; an elaborate saga around the surreptitious destruction of five disks of confidential information belonging to Google; furtive text messages advising each other to delete message logs; and search engine queries regarding “how to secretly delete files mac” or “can a MacBook be recovered after formatting the OS.”
But the fact that investigators “discovered no evidence” that Google confidential information retained or accessed by Levandowski was transferred to Otto or anyone else could undercut Waymo’s main charge of stolen trade secrets. Alsup correctly noted that in seeking to avoid the mandatory arbitration that would have resulted from a lawsuit against Levandowski, Waymo raised the stakes and sued Uber instead.
In other words, Uber ultimately may be able to avoid federal charges in this case, but Levandowski, who has asserted his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination, may not be as lucky.
Alsup notes that Waymo sued Uber, not Levandowski, to avoid mandatory arbitration, but seems to think their case against the man is stronger
— Caroline O'Donovan (@ceodonovan) October 3, 2017