Washington - Uber is building its self-driving car
business on stolen Google laser technology, according to a lawsuit filed
Thursday that pits two of the leading names in autonomous cars against each
other.
"Misappropriating this technology is akin to
stealing a secret recipe from a beverage company," according to a blog
post from Waymo, the self-driving company created by Google parent Alphabet.
Waymo said the alleged far-reaching thievery - which it
said was led by a former employee and involved the surreptitious downloading of
9.7 GB of confidential files and trade secrets - came to light in an apparently
errant email.
In an email, an Uber spokesperson said: "We take the
allegations made against Otto and Uber employees seriously and we will review
this matter carefully."
The suit, which was filed in US District Court in San
Francisco, names both Uber and Otto, an autonomous technology company Uber
acquired last August. The technology at issue is called LiDAR, which Waymo says
bounces "millions of laser beams off surrounding objects" to paint
"a 3D picture of the world."
"With a 360-degree field of vision, and the ability
to see in pitch black, Waymo's LiDAR sensors can actually detect potential
hazards that human drivers would miss," according to the lawsuit.
"Otto and Uber have taken Waymo's intellectual
property so that they could avoid incurring the risk, time, and expense of
independently developing their own technology. Ultimately, this calculated
theft reportedly netted Otto employees over half a billion dollars and allowed
Uber to revive a stalled program, all at Waymo's expense," the suit
alleges.
Read also: Uber is projected to lose $3 billion in 2016
Google is one of the pioneers of self-driving technology,
and the creation of Waymo was seen as a key step toward building an autonomous
technology business with human customers. The company took a blind man around
Austin alone in a small car that had no steering wheel, and it has also outfitted
Chrysler Pacifica minivans for potential passenger pickups sometime in the not
too distant future.
Uber, meanwhile, sees a grave potential threat to its
ride-hailing business, since eliminating human drivers would radically reduce
costs and allow potential competitors to cut in on their turf and vie for what
proponents said could be a massive market in driverless transportation.
Waymo said it learned of the alleged theft when it was
recently, and accidentally, copied on an email from one of its vendors.
"The email attached machine drawings of what
purports to be an Uber LiDAR circuit board. This circuit board bears a striking
resemblance to Waymo's own highly confidential and proprietary design and
reflects Waymo trade secrets," according to the lawsuit.
Waymo said that a key former employee, Anthony
Levandowski, "downloaded over 14,000 highly confidential and proprietary
design files for Waymo's various hardware systems" before founding Otto,
which targeted self-driving trucks as its first major autonomous business.
"Otto plus Uber is a dream team. Anthony is one of
the world's leading autonomous engineers," Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said
last year in announcing it was acquiring Otto.
According to Waymo's lawsuit, "a number of Waymo
employees subsequently also left to join Anthony Levandowski's new business,
downloading additional Waymo trade secrets in the days and hours prior to their
departure."