With progress in self-driving cars being made by Uber, the Google owned company Waymo is taking strong legal action against Otto, Uber’s self-driving unit, for stolen files. This company states that a former Waymo manager, Anthony Levandowski, stole files when he left to start Otto.

Uber obtained ownership of Otto when it purchased the company in 2016 for $700 million, which explains their involvement.  Upon hearing the allegations towards them, Uber said this legal issue is to be taken very seriously and are thoroughly going to review the all the accusations.

According to the lawsuit, Levandowski stole 14,000 confidential design files that he obtained while working as a Google employee at Waymo.  Waymo believes that Levandowski had constituted a plan in order to steal trade secrets and intellectual property from the company. Waymo is a company that was created earlier this year as a way for bringing self-driving technology to a forefront for Google who has been working on this technology for years.

“I do think Google is right for doing what they did since they laid down the ground work and Uber cannot come in and expect to use it and get away with it.  I do not think this is going to impact Uber’s current business but it will probably impact the future because they will have to find their own way to make driverless cars.” said Neeva Young, senior.

The technology in question in this lawsuit is called LiDAR.  LiDAR is a laser-based radar system that helps the car to visualize its surroundings as it is driving. Court documents that were filed showed that an email intended for Otto’s staff had been sent accidentally to a random Waymo employee.  

With this email, there were drawings of the LiDAR circuit board that Otto had created. From these drawings, Waymo saw that they bore a strong resemblance to their own unique LiDAR design.

“Google should be suing because they had the plans first for the self driving car so they reserve the rights to it.  It should not impact Uber that much since not many people have even heard about any of this.  I think Uber is going to agree to settle so they do not have to go to court and there will not be a case to try,” said Abigail Bennett, senior.

The scandal began when Levandowski downloaded at least 14,000 files to his laptop which he later reformatted.  Then he then went to a very confidential and higher up meeting with Uber from which he ends up forming a new company named OttoMotto.

Afterwards, Levandowski resigns from Waymo without giving any notice to the company.  Then the rest of the events played out from there in which the email gets sent to Waymo and then they catch on to Otto trying to nearly copy their LiDAR designs.

“I do not think there will be a case, Uber does not want to risk losing their business over this so they will try to settle with Google on best terms possible,”  said Neeva Young, senior.

According to Waymo, they did not make this decision lightly and thought it to be difficult to go and place allegations like these.  Waymo said that they must defend their investment and their development in this technology, so with the strong evidence showing that their designs have been stolen, they believed there was no other choice but to  take legal action.