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Judge orders Uber not to use technology taken from Waymo

224 pointsby abhi3about 8 years ago

10 comments

Animatsabout 8 years ago
Levandowski is going to come out of this OK. He was doing self-driving years before Google.<p>As I&#x27;ve pointed out before, the whole LIDAR thing is a side issue. Google&#x27;s LIDAR is another Velodyne-like spinning thing. Google&#x27;s patented innovation is to make each scan beam slightly oval, which is marginally useful but not essential. Spinning 3D LIDAR units are research and prototyping tools. The future is either flash LIDAR or MEMS. Even Velodyne is moving beyond the spinning top thing.[1]<p>Here&#x27;s a video with some images from Continental&#x27;s flash LIDAR.[2] That&#x27;s suitable for production cars. Continental is a big German auto parts company. They make other LIDAR products, vehicle cameras and processors, radars, GPS units, and most of the other parts needed for self-driving. Continental demoed a self-driving car in 2013. They have 1,300 people working on this. Uber makes a lot of noise, but Continental is going to ship product in volume.<p>Quanergy, a Silicon Valley startup, announced a flash LIDAR last year, but they seem to be having problems getting it out the door. A new startup, TetraView, got series A funding to develop a higher resolution flash LIDAR (&quot;2K&quot;, they boast), using standard CMOS technology.[3] That, if it works, will bring the price down further while increasing the resolution, and will have other robotics applications.<p>So nobody really needs the Waymo LIDAR technology. For testing, you can buy a Velodyne, and for production, the flash LIDAR people are almost ready.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnet.com&#x2F;roadshow&#x2F;news&#x2F;velodyne-lidar-enters-the-no-spin-zone&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnet.com&#x2F;roadshow&#x2F;news&#x2F;velodyne-lidar-enters-the...</a> [2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=xxy08YX0C8w" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=xxy08YX0C8w</a> [3] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tetravue.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tetravue.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;</a>
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pfarnsworthabout 8 years ago
Some highlights from the injunction:<p>1. &quot;Waymo’s patent theories are too weak to support any provisional relief.&quot;<p>2. &quot;By contrast, the trade secrets case presented by Waymo does warrant provisional relief.&quot;<p>3. &quot;Moreover, it has become clear that Waymo has both overreached in defining its trade secrets and made moving targets out of its asserted trade secrets to evade defensive arguments. Under these circumstances and on this record, no adverse inference that could be drawn in Waymo’s favor would justify overlooking these problems, pretending that all 121 of Waymo’s asserted trade secrets are valid, and enjoining defendants from using any of them so as to effectively halt Uber’s self-driving efforts until trial.&quot;<p>4. &quot;Waymo is hereby granted further expedited discovery in aid of possible further provisional relief. Subject to the protective order, and upon reasonable notice, Waymo’s counsel and one expert may inspect any and all aspects of defendants’ ongoingwork involving LiDAR — including, without limitation,schematics, work orders, source code, notes, and emails — whether or not said work resulted in any prototype or device.&quot;<p>EDIT: one more I forgot, which is interesting:<p>5. This order, however, threatens no sanctions against Levandowski. It simply directs Uber, a private employer, to do whatever it can to ensure that its employees return 14,000-plus pilfered files to their rightful owner. If Uber were to threaten Levandowski with termination for noncompliance,that threat would be backed up by only Uber’s power as a private employer, and Levandowski would remainfree to forfeit his private employment to preserve his Fifth Amendment privilege. No binding case law holdsthat the Fifth Amendment prohibits such actions by private employers. In short, in complying with this order,Uber has no excuse under the Fifth Amendment to pull any punches as to Levandowski.<p>Basically, if Levandowski refuses to turn over the documents, Uber is forced to fire him, which means the $250,000,000 they already gave him goes up in smoke.
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golferabout 8 years ago
Link to the full injunction text: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scribd.com&#x2F;document&#x2F;348409551&#x2F;Waymo-Uber-Injunction#from_embed" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scribd.com&#x2F;document&#x2F;348409551&#x2F;Waymo-Uber-Injunct...</a>
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greentrustabout 8 years ago
This ruling was actually relatively good news for Uber, it could have been worse. It&#x27;s only a partial preliminary injunction, they can still continue working on self-driving technology.
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tomglynchabout 8 years ago
How do they go about enforcing this?
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yeukhonabout 8 years ago
How come Levandowski isn&#x27;t sued for stealing data? Doesn&#x27;t what he did to Google considered stealing? I would have called for police investigation for someone so prominent stealing my company&#x27;s data.
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evanrileyabout 8 years ago
Is this enforceable? Or is it more of a &quot;If you get caught using it in the future more legal ramifications?&quot;
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delegateabout 8 years ago
Didn&#x27;t Uber pay like $680,000,000 for this technology ?
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rimjeillyabout 8 years ago
if this is all legit, it baffles me that this guy thought he would be able to &#x27;download&#x27; anything and take it and not be caught... weird
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eddieplan9about 8 years ago
The title screams bias and misinformation. It presumes Uber took technology from Waymo, which the judge rules against by stating that &quot;Waymo’s patent theories are too weak to support any provisional relief&quot; and &quot;it has become clear that Waymo has both overreached in defining its trade secrets and made moving targets out of its asserted trade secrets to evade defensive arguments&quot;.
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