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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.
Uber doing something unethical? This isn't news, it's business as usual.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
If these allegations are true, then the fallout from this suit is going to completely undermine Uber's long-term strategy. The direct financial hit may be enough to sink the company outright, but even if it doesn't, they'll be dead in the long term.
If the allegations are not true then it's an almighty blunder by Waymo; it'll hit their credibility really hard, but also their staff morale, because they'll all be wondering if they're going to be next to be falsely accused.
It would seem to me that Waymo know this, so they must believe they have good evidence and a watertight (uber-strong?) case or they wouldn't have gone public with it at all.
Google / Alphabet also has an investment in Uber, which muddies the waters further, and makes it even more certain that they'd only be doing this if they were absolutely convinced of it being true and of it holding up in court.
I'm looking forward to seeing this one play out. Whatever happens, it's going to be messy.
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.
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
Remember the thread yesterday about police subpoenaing Amazaon's Alexa recordings on a murder investigation? Can an email provider such as google or microsoft be required to supply email threads in a discovery proceeding? What about third party planning/scheduling/defect management/configuration management software? It is one thing if the data resides in the customer's computers/servers and the software vendor never had access to the data. But now a days I see lots of "cloud based" software doing this. Many companies use companies with names like AgileRally or CloudCentral. The entire history of user stories, discussions, projects plans, defects and corrections are archived at some fine grained detail in their servers. If they get subpoenaed in some discovery proceeding on such a patent lawsuit, how strongly would they protect their client's confidentiality? They might have contract to protect it, but at some point the cost of protecting the client might not be worth it for them and they might throw them under the bus.
Unless it is impossible for them to get the data. It is possible to create the system such that all the databases reside in the client's computer or servers. The software provider's site only runs the code and all access to the data base are funneled through client's servers and it would be impossible for the vendor to get the data without the cooperation of the client. Unless such protections are employed it would be a folly for R&D heavy companies to house their data outside their servers.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
just drove away all by themselves.
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.
Remember the thread yesterday about police subpoenaing Amazaon's Alexa recordings on a murder investigation? Can an email provider such as google or microsoft be required to supply email threads in a discovery proceeding? What about third party planning/scheduling/defect management/configuration management software? It is one thing if the data resides in the customer's computers/servers and the software vendor never had access to the data. But now a days I see lots of "cloud based" software doing this. Many companies use companies with names like AgileRally or CloudCentral. The entire history of user stories, discussions, projects plans, defects and corrections are archived at some fine grained detail in their servers. If they get subpoenaed in some discovery proceeding on such a patent lawsuit, how strongly would they protect their client's confidentiality? They might have contract to protect it, but at some point the cost of protecting the client might not be worth it for them and they might throw them under the bus.
I don't think there's any question that Google or Microsoft could be required to provide email threads and other data. I think what was novel about the Alexa recordings was the realization that the data exists and that a conversation could be recorded without necessarily being aware that it was.
There is no such expectation with email - when you send an email there is no question that the recipient is going to have a record of it; and most people are clueful enough to realize that their email provider and the recipient email provider also have a copy.
The more interesting question is probably whether Waymo can get Google to provide email records and such without court involvement. Though if you're going to do that sort of thing like steal secrets from Google, you'd have to be pretty daft to host your email with Google.
or should I say Carma.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Just so we're clear, you're saying that an up-and-coming technology that has the potential to be the single largest paradigm shift since the dawn of the self-propelled vehicle does not belong on Slashdot?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
The secret to getting out of engineering or other technical work and into management is to become friends with management and to see them socially. Go drink with them. Go play golf with them. Go camping, go to strip clubs, go to games like football or baseball or the like, go play with offroad toys like quads or dune buggies with them. Whatever their interest is, go do it with them.
Of course, for this to work you probably have to be likable to them too.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
The customer knows what is really valuable, guess the motivation of the other party and know what one should try to protect and what one should disclose to decrease signal to noise ratio. One side wants an expanded fishing expedition. The other side wants to draw red herrings across the trail. In this high stakes game, bringing in a third party who may be able to provide the data makes things difficult. The only way to proceed is to make sure the third party vendors can not physically deliver the data. Even if the code runs on the vendors servers, there should be no permanent data stored there. Not even encrypted version of the entire data base. Defendant will be forced to disclose the encryption keys, and the vendor might be able to decrypt it all.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
That's beause Google is learning that it's risky to popular opinion to develop everything in-house, especially when those developments are slapped with your brand. If those developments become somewhat adopted but not enough to be profitable, when they're eventually abandoned and shut down the users get very noisy about it.
Cisco took an alternate approach at some point, they would spin-off employees to help startups, and they would invest in those startups such that they had right of first acquisition. This allowed Cisco to help grow the tech but not under the Cisco brand, so if it didn't work out then the customers of the startup weren't mad at Cisco for creating something that they depend on then shuttering it. If the product takes off then Cisco pulls it marker and buys the company and integrates it.
There is an upside to Google's approach, their integration is arguably a lot better. Cisco's portfolio is loaded with moderately overlapping products and services that do not always mesh well together. If you want to buy in to their gamut of security products you'll end up with so much overlap without enough interoperability that you'll end up with multiple things trying to accomplish the same goals, with performance hits accordingly. Google has less of that.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It is difficult to measure just how much access a given employee needs. It's also difficult to justify restricting access to where the employee must have live VPN access in order to get to data, especially if that employee travels extensively and can use hours and hours in-flight as productive time by having locally stored data.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Alphabet's just upset that they've been messing around with self-driving cars for the better part of a decade and it still doesn't look any closer to a product, and Uber has stolen a march on them by actually _using_ them. If you can't make your product succeed, tearing down the competition is almost as good.
Uber aren't using them, they are talking about using them, but all their "tests" are just PR at this point since we are still a couple of generations of self-driving cars away from them being able to do last mile point-to-point driving.