Uber settles with Waymo in trade secrets dispute

SAN FRANCISCO – In a sudden end to a bitter skirmish over self-driving car trade secrets, Uber settled a lawsuit Friday brought by Waymo, Google’s self-driving car company.

As the fifth day of a trial was set to begin, Waymo announced the news. According to the terms of the settlement, it will receive 0.34% of Uber’s equity, which comes to about $245 million.

The deal followed a week of testimony that spotlighted the competitive tactics of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, who led the company since its founding in 2009 until June.

New CEO Dara Khosrowshahi — hired in August after Kalanick was ousted by investors because of mounting scandals — apologized to competitor Waymo, agreed to pay the fine and promised Uber would clean up its act. Neither he nor Uber admitted to obtaining trade secrets.

“While I cannot erase the past, I can commit, on behalf of every Uber employee, that we will learn from it, and it will inform our actions going forward,” Khosrowshahi wrote. “As we change the way we operate and put integrity at the core of every decision we make, we look forward to the great race to build the future.”

“As Uber’s statement indicates, no trade secrets ever came to Uber,” Kalanick said. “The evidence at trial overwhelmingly proved that, and had the trial proceeded to its conclusion, it is clear Uber would have prevailed.”

Waymo lawyers painted former and current Uber employees as shady at best and conspiratorial at worst. They never highlighted what unique LiDAR technology was developed by Waymo engineers or showed evidence that Uber used that information to create its LiDAR. LiDAR uses lasers atop a self-driving car to help the vehicle “see” its environment. Though the technology is sophisticated, it is available from suppliers such as Velodyne. Judge William Alsup made it clear the trial wasn’t about Uber’s business actions but whether its LiDAR was based on stolen information.

Waymo’s lawsuit, filed roughly a year ago, said Uber was developing light detection and ranging systems based on information stolen by former Waymo employee Anthony Levandowski, who started a self-driving truck company in early 2016 that Uber bought that August for about $680 million. Kalanick wooed the engineer while he was at Google. Levandowski wanted to start his own company. Kalanick encouraged his venture, and eight months after Otto was founded, Uber bought it. The lawsuit alleged Levandowski downloaded about 14,000 files from Google’s servers before leaving the company.

What remains unclear is how the settlement affects Uber’s self-driving car strategy. If its LiDAR never had any Waymo trade secrets, the company should be able to proceed with its various self-driving car tests. If that’s not the case, then it would have to rebuild its LiDAR or retrofit its cars with LiDAR purchased on the open market, a potentially costly and time-consuming move.

“While I cannot erase the past, I can commit, on behalf of every Uber employee, that we will learn from it.” Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber CEO