After an email exchange that revealed designs with a “striking resemblance” between the companies’ self-driving car designs, Google-parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has filed a suit against Uber Technologies.
Lidar, a technology that using light pulses reflected off objects to gauge their position on or near the road, is a crucial component of the new autonomous driving systems. Traditionally very expensive, Waymo – Alphabet’s self-diving car unit – sought to design one over 90 percent cheaper, making it the company’s “most valuable assets,” Waymo said.
The drawings, which were downloaded and emailed from Waymo, contained Alphabet’s trade secrets. The suit also alleges that a former Google employee “downloaded more than 14,000 highly confidential and proprietary files shortly before his resignation.”
Using a Google-issued laptop, the employee Anthony Levandowski “downloaded 9.7 GB of Waymo’s highly confidential files and trade secrets, including blueprints, design files and testing documentation. Then he connected an external drive to the laptop. Mr. Levandowski then wiped and reformatted the laptop in an attempt to erase forensic fingerprints,” Waymo said in a statement.
“Misappropriating this technology is akin to stealing a secret recipe from a beverage company,” said Alphabet.
Now competitors, Uber and Google was once a productive relationship. Whilst many industry experts saw the development into self-driving vehicles as an opportunity for the two technology giants to work together, Uber decided to become a competitor and develop autonomous technology on its own.
Billions of dollars have been invested into self-driving vehicles in the past few years, as companies scramble for leadership in the industry.
In February, Ford (NYSE:F) announced plans to invest up to $1 billion over five years in Argo AI, a startup co-founded by Bryan Salesky, who is a former Google Self-Driving Car engineer.
Last year, Jiajun Zhu and Dave Ferguson, also left Google to found Nuro.ai, another would-be Waymo competitor.