Posts Tagged: "Waymo"

Tesla recently filed two lawsuits for theft of trade secrets. In March, the auto maker sued several former employees and the two companies they joined, Zoox and Chinese EV automaker Xiaopeng. The trade secrets involved their driverless vehicle technology. Haliburton just sued a former employee for stealing information, getting a patent on it, and then trying to sell it back to Haliburton. Phillips is suing a former employee for stealing secrets that will give competitors a “decades long head start.” Waymo, Google’s self-driving car program, settled with Uber for theft of trade secrets. The settlement was reported by CNN Business to be a portion of Uber’s equity, estimated at $245 million. In In August, the United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) for the Northern District of California charged former Google employee Anthony Levandowski with 33 counts of theft and attempted theft of trade secrets from Google under 18 U.S.C. § 1832 of the Economic Espionage Act (EEA). These cases, and many more like them, involve employees leaving and taking trade secrets with them. Employees come and go, but they shouldn’t take your valuable secrets. You can stop them if you have systems in place, but you have only yourself to blame if you don’t.

he U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a final office action in an ex parte reexamination of a patent owned by Google self-driving car development subsidiary Waymo. As a result of the reexamination, Waymo stands to lose 53 of 56 claims, including all 20 of the patent claims originally issued. The patent in question had been asserted as part of the company’s well-known infringement suit filed against Uber.

LOT Network markets itself as a non-profit consortium, which offers its members a legal mechanism affording them protection from patent assertion entities (PAEs) and immunizes its members against patent suits from non-operating entities for about 1.2 million worldwide patent assets currently owned by LOT members… The LOT Network conditional license only applies to patents that are in network at the time that a firm joins the consortium. If a business joins LOT after a LOT member sells a patent, previous LOT members are protected by the conditional license whereas the new member still faces the potential of an infringement suit down the road on that patent.

There are many lessons to be drawn from the Waymo v. Uber litigation. This is perhaps the most important. Lawsuits are about history, while business is about the future… Most trade secret litigation is fueled by emotional reactions to perceived wrongs. Plaintiffs feel betrayed and abandoned, and defendants feel blamed and misunderstood. Each side wants to fight in order to validate its perspective. So the lawsuit begins with great energy. But over time, new facts emerge, and the parties begin to reconsider the cost/benefit analysis of continuing the struggle.

Although the amount of the settlement was far less than $2.7 billion in amount sought by Waymo, the settlement apparently did include a payment from Uber of 0.34% of Uber equity—or about $244.8 million in stock based on a $72 billion valuation of Uber… Both sides had a lot riding on the outcome of the trial. In addition to the billions in damages, Waymo was seeking an injunction to prevent Uber from using any technology that may have originated from Waymo, which would have been a huge set back for Uber’s program. Indeed, during his first day of being questioned, the former CEO of Uber, Travis Kalanick, agreed that developing autonomous vehicles amounts to an “existential question” for Uber, and that the market for driverless cars is likely to be “winner-take-all.”

Earlier today Alphabet subsidiary Waymo settled with Uber in the midst of a trade secret infringement trial. This lawsuit originated when Waymo brought suit against Uber in 2017, alleging that a former Waymo engineer Anthony Levandowski, who was hired by Uber to lead Uber’s self-driving car project, took with him thousands of confidential documents… The U.S. Department of Justice is conducting a separate, criminal investigation into the alleged theft of trade secrets. Levandowski has claimed a Fifth Amendment privilege and has not spoken about the events leading to this dispute.

Every trade secret case is built around a story. Sure, the plaintiff’s story is different than the defendant’s, even though each draws on the same facts. For the rest of us that don’t have a dog in the fight, helpful lessons are available. But sometimes you have to look hard to find them. Here’s one. When Waymo, the Google self-driving car company, filed its lawsuit against Uber earlier this year, the story was remarkable enough… This case is instructive for any business considering hiring an executive from a competitor: be aware that the cost of this recruitment might include the legal fees, disruption and liability risk of a trade secret claim.

In a joint stipulation and order entered three claims of patent infringement were dropped in the intellectual property case being fought between San Francisco, CA-based transportation company Uber Technologies and Waymo, one of the subsidiaries of Google-owner Alphabet Inc. The order is one of the most recent filings in a case which has seen hundreds of documents filed since the case began this February. The case is filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (N.D. Cal.).

Waymo’s suit includes counts of infringement for each of the four patents asserted in the case. The suit also includes counts for violations of the Defend Trade Secrets Act and state claims for violations of the California Uniform Trade Secret Act. Waymo is seeking preliminary and permanent injunctions, damages for patent infringement including trebled damages for infringement of the ‘922, ‘464 and ‘273 patents and punitive damages among other forms of relief.