Thursday, February 23, 2017

Waymo Comments On Why They're Suing Uber

I forgot a couple hat tips in the Waymo/Uber post immediately below, here they are:
On the New York Times story, Alphaville's Kadhim Shubber who retweeted the Times' Mike Issac, co-writer on the Times piece. On the Bloomberg story. ZeroHedge.

And on this piece from Medium, once again Mr. Issac: 

A note on our lawsuit against Otto and Uber
...Why we’re taking a stand
In 2016, Uber bought a six-month old startup called Otto and appointed its founder (a former employee on our self-driving car project) as its head of self-driving technology. At the time, it was reported that Otto’s LiDAR sensor was one of the key reasons Uber acquired the company.
Recently, we received an unexpected email. One of our suppliers specializing in LiDAR components sent us an attachment (apparently inadvertently) of machine drawings of what was purported to be Uber’s LiDAR circuit board — except its design bore a striking resemblance to Waymo’s unique LiDAR design.

We found that six weeks before his resignation this former employee, Anthony Levandowski, downloaded over 14,000 highly confidential and proprietary design files for Waymo’s various hardware systems, including designs of Waymo’s LiDAR and circuit board. To gain access to Waymo’s design server, Mr. Levandowski searched for and installed specialized software onto his company-issued laptop. Once inside, he downloaded 9.7 GB of Waymo’s highly confidential files and trade secrets, including blueprints, design files and testing documentation. Then he connected an external drive to the laptop. Mr. Levandowski then wiped and reformatted the laptop in an attempt to erase forensic fingerprints....MORE