Charles Verhoeven of Quinn Emmanuel. (Photo: Jason Doiy/ALM)
Google parent Alphabet has turned to the litigator who waged its smartphone wars—Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan partner Charles Verhoeven—for a suit over the future of self-driving cars.
Alphabet’s automobile subsidiary Waymo sued Uber Technologies Inc. on Thursday in San Francisco federal court, accusing it of using stolen laser technology that Google spent years and millions of dollars developing. Waymo v. Uber Technologies accuses Uber and its driverless car subsidiary, Ottomotto LLC, of violating state and federal trade secret laws, infringing three Google patents and unfair competition.
The complaint alleges that former Waymo manager Anthony Levandowski downloaded 14,000 confidential computer files related to Google’s laser-based scanning and mapping technology, known as LiDAR, before he left to start his own rival company a year ago. Uber acquired the company, now known as Otto, last summer for $680 million.
Waymo characterizes the acquisition as suddenly transforming Uber from an also-ran whose self-driving car collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University was foundering into a serious competitor.
“While Waymo developed its custom LiDAR systems with sustained effort over many years, defendants leveraged stolen information to shortcut the process and purportedly build a comparable LiDAR system in only nine months,” Waymo alleges in the complaint signed by Verhoeven.
“We take the allegations made against Otto and Uber employees seriously and we will review this matter carefully,” an Uber spokesman said in an email.
The suit is awkward for Google on a couple of fronts. One is that it’s a frequent target of patent infringement suits, and has been a vocal advocate for reforms that discourage patent litigaton. The other is that it has invested more than $250 million in Uber, according to published reports. David Drummond, Google’s senior vice president of corporate development and former GC, served as an Uber board member until last August.
Perhaps with some of those considerations in mind, Waymo posted an article to Medium explaining its actions. “Our parent company Alphabet has long worked with Uber in many areas, and we didn’t make this decision lightly,” the article states. “However, given the overwhelming facts that our technology has been stolen, we have no choice but to defend our investment and development of this unique technology.”
Contact Scott Graham at [email protected]. On Twitter: @ScottKGraham
