San Francisco - Uber Technologies threatened to
fire the man at the centre of its legal battle with Alphabet , telling its
top driverless technology engineer to either deny taking files from his former
employer or turn them over.
Uber General Counsel Salle Yoo made the demand in a May 15
letter to Anthony Levandowski, citing a court order. Yoo told him that failure
to comply with the demand could result in his termination from the company,
according to a court filing. The engineer formerly worked at Alphabet’s Waymo
unit.
“If you do not agree to comply with all of the requirements
set forth herein, or if you fail to comply in a material manner, then Uber will
take adverse employment action against you, which may include termination of
your employment,” Yoo wrote in the letter.
Levandowski led Uber’s autonomous vehicle program until he
was demoted last month. The Alphabet unit claims he downloaded thousands of
confidential files before he left the company to launch his own self-driving start-up,
Otto, that was acquired by Uber for $680 million.
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Levandowski, who isn’t a defendant in Waymo’s lawsuit, argued
in a court filing that US District Judge William Alsup’s May 11 order had
imposed an impossible burden on the engineer. It forces him to choose between
his Constitutional rights against self-incrimination or his job and the order
should be amended, his lawyer Miles Ehrlich wrote in the filing.
The order "leaves little room for interpretation,"
Ehrlich wrote. "Anything short of firing Mr. Levandowski to get him to waive
his Fifth Amendment rights and attorney-client privileges would put Uber at
risk of contempt, since it would fail to measure up to the Court’s command that
Uber exercise every lawful power it has over Mr. Levandowski." Alsup has asked federal prosecutors to investigate claims
made in the case.
Uber spokeswoman Chelsea Kohler declined to comment. Waymo
spokesman Johnny Luu didn’t immediately respond to an email and Ehrlich didn’t
immediately return a call and an email sent after regular business hours. The letter from Yoo was attached to a May 18 filing in
Waymo’s trade secret theft lawsuit against Uber.
“We continue to believe that no Waymo trade secrets have
ever been used in the development of our self-driving technology, and we remain
confident that we will prove that fact in due course,” Yoo wrote. “Until then,
we insist that you do everything in your power to assist us in complying with
the order.”