Uber has settled its lawsuit with Waymo over driverless car secrets, Bloomberg News reports. The two companies were in the midst of a jury trial in court, which had been hearing evidence all week.
In the case, Uber was accused of stealing Waymo trade secrets relating to driverless car hardware, via its acquisition of Otto, a driverless truck startup founded by former Waymo engineer Andrew Levandowski. Judge Alsup, presiding over the case, broke the news this morning and dismissed the case with prejudice.
The news was first reported by Bloomberg, but has been confirmed by numerous reporters attending the trial. Uber and Waymo published simultaneous statements this morning addressing the issue. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in a blog post that “my job as Uber’s CEO is to set the course for the future of the company: innovating and growing responsibly, as well as acknowledging and correcting mistakes of the past. In doing so, I want to express regret for the actions that have caused me to write this letter.”
Waymo said in a statement “We have reached an agreement with Uber that we believe will protect Waymo’s intellectual property now and into the future. We are committed to working with Uber to make sure that each company develops its own technology.” Although the details of the settlement are not public, Waymo said that the settlement “includes an agreement to ensure that any Waymo confidential information is not being incorporated in Uber Advanced Technologies Group hardware and software. ”
In its lawsuit, Waymo alleged that Uber conspired to steal trade secrets from the Google-owned self-driving car company. Andrew Levandowski, a former lead engineer at Waymo, left the company to found Otto, a self-driving truck startup that was acquired shortly after founding by Uber. According to Waymo’s court filings, Levandowski spoke repeatedly with Uber founder Travis Kalanick prior to leaving Waymo, and he took 14 gigabytes of proprietary Waymo data with him when he left the company.
Although the two companies have been in legal disputes over the matter for the last year, the jury trial only started this week. The court case has only served to worsen Uber’s already-poor public reputation, and has included new revelations like the fact that Uber allegedly had an entire division tasked to steal trade secrets from rivals.
Since taking over as Uber’s CEO, Khosrowshahi has been doing damage control of Uber’s existing problems nearly full-time. He stopped short of admitting any liability in his statement, saying “we do not believe that any trade secrets made their way from Waymo to Uber, nor do we believe that Uber has used any of Waymo’s proprietary information in its self-driving technology.” However, Khosrowshahi clearly strikes a note of contrition, ending with “while I cannot erase the past, I can commit, on behalf of every Uber employee, that we will learn from it, and it will inform our actions going forward.”
The two full statements are below:
Uber
My job as Uber’s CEO is to set the course for the future of the company: innovating and growing responsibly, as well as acknowledging and correcting mistakes of the past. In doing so, I want to express regret for the actions that have caused me to write this letter.
To our friends at Alphabet: we are partners, you are an important investor in Uber, and we share a deep belief in the power of technology to change people’s lives for the better. Of course, we are also competitors. And while we won’t agree on everything going forward, we agree that Uber’s acquisition of Otto could and should have been handled differently.
To our employees, in particular the great and talented people of Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group: I am inspired by your passion and commitment to bringing self-driving vehicles to life. Over the last year, you’ve been distracted from your mission. For that I am sorry.
There is no question that self-driving technology is crucial to the future of transportation—a future in which Uber intends to play an important role. Through that lens, the acquisition of Otto made good business sense.
But the prospect that a couple of Waymo employees may have inappropriately solicited others to join Otto, and that they may have potentially left with Google files in their possession, in retrospect, raised some hard questions.
To be clear, while we do not believe that any trade secrets made their way from Waymo to Uber, nor do we believe that Uber has used any of Waymo’s proprietary information in its self-driving technology, we are taking steps with Waymo to ensure our Lidar and software represents just our good work.
While I cannot erase the past, I can commit, on behalf of every Uber employee, that we will learn from it, and it will inform our actions going forward. I’ve told Alphabet that the incredible people at Uber ATG are focused on ensuring that our development represents the very best of Uber’s innovation and experience in self-driving technology.
As we change the way we operate and put integrity at the core of every decision we make, we look forward to the great race to build the future. We believe that race should be fair—and one whose ultimate winners are people, cities and our environment.
Dara
Waymo
“We have reached an agreement with Uber that we believe will protect Waymo’s intellectual property now and into the future. We are committed to working with Uber to make sure that each company develops its own technology. This includes an agreement to ensure that any Waymo confidential information is not being incorporated in Uber Advanced Technologies Group hardware and software. We have always believed competition should be fueled by innovation in the labs and on the roads and we look forward to bringing fully self-driving cars to the world.”
