Uber has fired prized engineer Anthony Levandowski, who was originally hired to lead the company’s self-driving car project, because he refused to give evidence as part of a high profile lawsuit, The New York Times reported.
The lawsuit, which was filed in February, contends that Levandowski stole trade secrets that he helped create while at Waymo – the self-driving car project owned by Google parent company Alphabet – where he worked for almost nine years. The suit alleges that he funneled that stolen technology into a self-driving truck company called Otto, which was later acquired by Uber for $680 million under a year after launching.
Got that?
Alphabet: Mountain View mega-company formerly known as Google, has been investing in self-driving car technology since 2009, recently spun out the project as its own company
Waymo: Alphabet subsidiary working on self-driving car technology, where Levandowski worked pre-spinoff
Uber: Ride-hailing company led by a CEO who has espoused the values of bucking norms and government regulation in a quest to achieve dominance, started investing in self-driving vehicle technology around 2015
Otto: Self-driving truck company started by Levandowski, later acquired by Uber
Waymo is alleging that Levandowski downloaded files just a month before leaving to start Otto. Waymo has also alleged that other Alphabet employees who eventually left the company to join Levandowski also downloaded files before leaving. The lawsuit asks that Uber suspend use of any technology that uses Waymo’s trade secrets, which could damage Uber’s self-driving car ambitions as it races to capture a budding market.
Levandowski has not been personally targeted in Waymo’s lawsuit, but he asserted his Fifth Amendment right not to testify, fearing potential criminal charges.
Uber had threatened to fire Levandowski earlier this month for refusing to cooperate with its lawyers. “While we have respected your personal liberties, it is our view that the court’s order requires us to make these demands of you,” Salle Yoo, Uber’s general counsel, said in a letter at the time to Levandowski. “We insist that you do everything in your power to assist us in complying with the order.”
The lawsuit is centered around 9.7 gigabytes of data that Waymo alleges Levandowski stole. That data relates to lidar, the technology which allows a self-driving car to visualize and analyze its surroundings.
Uber has denied all charges brought by Waymo. “Over the last few months Uber has provided significant evidence to the court to demonstrate that our self-driving technology has been built independently,” Angela Padilla, Uber’s associate general counsel for employment and litigation, wrote to employees in an email acquired by The New York Times. “Over that same period, Uber has urged Anthony to fully cooperate in helping the court get to the facts and ultimately helping to prove our case.”
Waymo says the lawsuit originated because someone at the company was inadvertently copied on an email from a supplier. Inside that email was Uber’s circuit board design for its lidar technology, which Waymo said bore “a striking resemblance” to its own lidar tech.
Waymo, whose parent company Alphabet once invested $258 million into Uber, has now teamed up with Uber’s biggest competitor, Lyft, to develop and create self-driving cars.
