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Alphabet's Waymo Asks Judge To Block Uber From Using Self-Driving Car Secrets (theverge.com)
Waymo, Alphabet's self-driving spinoff from Google, is formally asking a judge to block Uber from operating its autonomous vehicles, according to new documents filed in Waymo's lawsuit against Uber. From a report on The Verge: The lawsuit, which was filed last month, alleges that Uber stole key elements of its self-driving car technology from Google. Uber has called the accusations "baseless." Today in federal court, Waymo filed the sworn testimony of Gary Brown, a forensic security engineer with Google since 2013. Citing logs from Google's secure network, Brown claims that Anthony Levandowski, a former Google engineer who now runs Uber's self-driving car program, downloaded 14,000 files from a Google repository that contain design files, schematics, and other confidential information pertaining to its self-driving car project. Levandowski used his personal laptop to download the files, a fact that Brown says made it easy to track.
Uber really is a despicable company
Name ONE other bad thing Uber has done!
WTB [sig], PST!!!
A patent. Trade secrets can bite you in the ass, and this is why.
From what I've been able to piece together online, it looks like Uber might be in serious trouble. Google apparently really started to suspect something was wrong when one of the LiDAR component providers noticed both companies were sourcing the same parts with Uber apparently using virtually identical circuit board layouts. The timing looks bad as well with the the small startup company being immediately bought up by Uber and sudden development of Self-Driving technology. Plus you're talking about a company who knowingly tested their Self-Driving cars on the street without bothering to purchase a licence to do so. Even if Uber gets off scott free there's this entire question of Patents too which Google probably entirely holds...
The judge's ruling might well put the onus on Uber to prove that it's not using stolen data, which could mean going literally back to the drawing board with an entirely new set of staff that have never worked with the data taken from Google.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Using a "company store" model to essentially indebt drivers who need cars but can't afford cars and probably shouldn't be buying cars that expensive in the first place.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
"Don't talk to cops" applies to software and companies you don't like, just as well as to you and I.
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OK, I'll bite, why not?
Because in one case, you are knowingly exchanging usage data and patterns for services, and the other is corporate espionage. Any other hard questions?
Here's the law. They can stop Uber from using the Google technology (mainly the LIDAR afaict) until it becomes common knowledge (and then they have to wait a little longer to make up for the head-start they got by stealing the secret). They can use civil seizure to ensure Uber doesn't secretly continue using the technology. They can make Uber pay damages (profits lost by Google + profits gained by Uber).
There is also the issue of patent 8,836,922, which Google claims is being violated. It is also related to LiDAR. Also 9,368,936 and 9,086,273.
Google is also claiming that Uber's business practices were unfair, fraudulent, and illegal. They don't really go into detail why, except to say that reasonable people would have been deceived by misrepresentations and omissions coming from Uber.
So those are the claims. Also worth noting that Google has asserted their right to a jury trial. Here's the original lawsuit, it's fairly readable.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I don't think that it would be all that difficult to make roads and cars talk, if countries and automakers could agree on a standard, and if those jurisdictions responsible would implement that standard widely.
Consider the idea of embedding a guide cable into the roadbed. They already embed wiring into the road at stoplights for the inductive sensor to detect the mass of the vehicle to trigger the light, so the technology to modify the road itself while keeping it durable is there. If a protocol were developed to let cars follow the wire in the lane, and if extra readable position indicators were added to the road at increments to help keep the car calibrated for its location and to provide for data like specifics about the road and lights and intersections and the like, and if intelligent construction barriers were implemented that the cars could interrogate to know when they need to deviate from the wire in the road, it probably could make self-driving cars happen very quickly. Unfortunately that's a LOT of road to precision saw-cut and embed the wiring into, plus the power distribution to run it, plus the recordkeeping to ensure that the road data is accurate and is added to the vehicles. No one task is especially difficult and many robotic systems already use this kind of technology for following pathways, but it's simply so much to do that no one wants to take that approach.
Instead they're pushing for cars being able to interpret the existing conditions that normal drivers have to interpret, to find lanes, to observe traffic lights, plus all of the safety stuff for interacting with objects in the real world. What they should consider doing is placing the wire in the road in cities, and then using the observational-only model on limited-access freeways where simple lane-keeping is the bulk of what's needed as there are no at-grade crossings, no traffic lights other that metered ramps to get on the freeway to begin with, and many fewer incidences of pedestrians and other non-vehicle objects on the freeway. Unfortunately to do this requires a strong degree of political will and so far that will doesn't exist.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.