In a recent lawsuit filed by Google-owned Waymo, the suit claimed that Uber stole lidar technology from them. The team of engineers from Waymo has spent countless of hours perfecting the lidar technology, a radar-like system of lasers. The lawsuit claimed that an Anthony Levandowski, who used to work with Waymo, downloaded 14,000 technical files from a company server. He later then left the company and used the information to co-found the autonomous truck startup, Otto. Uber bought Otto a few months later and hired Levandowski to lead its autonomous driving program.
Angela Padilla, a lawyer for Uber, gave a statement on Friday. “Waymo’s injunction motion is a misfire. There is no evidence that any of the 14,000 files in question ever touched Uber’s servers, and Waymo’s assertion that our multi-lens LiDAR is the same as their single-lens LiDAR is clearly false.”
Uber’s claim to defence would be that they will state that their current technology is far behind their competitors in autonomous driving and none of their existing technologies used any of Waymo’s technology. Uber has been relying on third party providers for LiDAR technology so far.
At the moment, Anthony Levandowski has claimed the fifth amendment in court so as not to testify in this case in order to avoid criminal charges.
