Uber says Waymo’s preliminary injunction request is a ‘misfire’

Transportation company Uber has said that a request for a preliminary injunction by Google’s former self-driving car division Waymo is a “misfire”.

Uber filed its response (pdf) at the US District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division on Friday, April 7.

On March 13, WIPR reported that Uber and its self-driving truck company Otto were accused of misappropriating and infringing Waymo’s LiDAR, a laser-based scanning and mapping technology.

Waymo had claimed in February that a former manager, who is now at Uber, had downloaded more than 14,000 highly confidential and proprietary files shortly before resigning.

The self-driving car division argued that this “calculated theft” of trade secrets netted Otto employees “over half a billion dollars” and allowed Uber to “revive a stalled programme, all at Waymo’s expense”.

Waymo also claimed in its original suit that Uber infringed its patents covering the LiDAR technology.

The patents included US numbers 8,836,922; 9,368,936; and 9,086,273.

Waymo asked for a preliminary injunction to stop Uber and Otto using the alleged trade secrets and infringing its patents.

Uber responded to Waymo’s complaint on April 7, when it said that the company’s preliminary injunction motion is a “misfire”.

The transportation business added that Waymo’s central arguments, that former Waymo employees brought thousands of confidential Waymo documents to Uber to build a “copycat” LiDAR and that Uber’s system closely mimics Waymo’s single-lens design—are “demonstrably false”.

Uber said that a search of its computers has “not yielded any of the 14,000 files Waymo alleges that Uber misappropriated”.

“Uber made sure to have policies and practices in place to prevent misappropriation, and these measures have worked,” the suit said.

The complaint added that Waymo “cannot show” that Uber misappropriated its trade secrets or infringed its patents.

Uber concluded that if the court grants Waymo’s motion, there would be “harm” to Uber and the public.

An Uber spokesperson told WIPR: "If Waymo genuinely thought that Uber was using its secrets, it would not have waited more than five months to seek an injunction. Waymo doesn’t meet the high bar for an injunction, which would stifle independent innovation and competition.”

A Waymo spokesperon said: “Uber’s assertion that they’ve never touched the 14,000 stolen files is disingenuous at best, given their refusal to look in the most obvious place: the computers and devices owned by the head of their self-driving program."

Waymo is asking the court to step in "based on clear evidence" that Uber is using, or plans to use, Waymo's trade secrets to develop its LiDAR technology, as seen in both "circuit board blueprints and filings in Nevada".