A quick update on the Waymo vs. Uber court case.
Last week Uber suffered a setback in their court case when the judge referred the case to the U.S. attorney for an investigation into the possible theft of trade secrets by an Uber executive.
In the ruling, Judge William Alsup said the case must stay in court and not go to a private arbitrator as Uber had wanted.
Waymo, Google’s autonomous car company, sued Uber earlier this year claiming that its former self-driving car expert — Anthony Levandowski — had stolen 14,000 files related to Google’s proprietary LiDAR technology before starting a company, Otto, which Uber bought last summer for $670 million US.
Judge Alsup also has issued a ruling, which remains under seal, on Waymo’s request for an injunction against Uber that would effectively halt its self-driving car testing program. This would be a stumbling block in Uber’s ambitions to develop fully autonomous vehicles.
