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Alphabet's Waymo Sues Uber For Allegedly Stealing Self-Driving Secrets (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: It took Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo seven years to design and build a laser-scanning system to guide its self-driving cars. Uber Technologies Inc. allegedly did it in nine months. Waymo claims in a lawsuit filed Thursday that was possible because a former employee stole the designs and technology and started a new company. Waymo accuses several employees of Otto, a self-driving startup Uber acquired in August for $680 million, of lifting technical information from Google's autonomous car project. The "calculated theft" of Alphabet's technology earned Otto's employees more than $500 million, according to the complaint in San Francisco federal court. The claims in Thursday's case include unfair competition, patent infringement and trade secret misappropriation. Waymo was inadvertently copied on an e-mail from one of its vendors, which had an attachment showing an Uber lidar circuit board that had a "striking resemblance" to Waymo's design, according to the complaint. Anthony Levandowski, a former manager at Waymo, in December 2015 downloaded more than 14,000 proprietary and confidential files, including the lidar circuit board designs, according to the complaint. He also allegedly created a domain name for his new company and confided in some of his Waymo colleagues of plans to "replicate" its technology for a competitor. Levandowski left Waymo in January 2016 and went on in May to form Otto LLC, which planned to develop hardware and software for autonomous vehicles.
Alphabet are alleging they have specific evidence the former employee downloaded the designs to a laptop, which he then tried to wipe to hide any trace he'd done this. Alphabet are also alleging the same former employee actually bragged about what he was going to do before he did it.
So... assuming they're not lying, this is pretty much open and shut. I guess we'll find out over the next few weeks.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Software code DOES get subpoenaed all the time in disputes. This doesn't even have to be criminal cases, in civil cases as well. If the code resides in a version control system of some sort they typically get all of that as well. (Some smart guys have tried to deliver code in printed form to bury the other party but the courts have mostly refused those 'smart' tactics.
Email gets subpoenaed all the time as well. Again bot in civil and criminal cases. Also from outside vendors. This is not a big issue. A company gets a subpoena from a judge and they hand over the data. What is troubling with surveillance in the US is that it is happening on a massive scale without judicial oversight.
Your latest paragraph is moot. Once served with a subpoena those materials HAVE to be turned over. It doesn't matter where the data resides. If people can see it and manipulate it it can be turned over.
Hajo Monogamy: Belief so strong that millions of people end perfectly good relationships in order to start a new one.
Well you could find that critique in Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (IMO a much better written book) which predates it. Das Kapital is a turgid piece of crap. The only interesting quote from that book is the bit where he talks about "precious stones" and how they're basically junk in terms of basic materials and that they could one day be manufactured and priced like dirt. Then again Atlas Shrugged is just as bad a read with lots and lots of random pointless dialogue.
My advice: read The Wealth of Nations and skip those two.