Waymo Accuses Uber Using Stolen Technology While Developing Autonomous Vehicles

Uber has been using stolen technology that was earlier the property of Google’s former project leaders.

The self-driving car business of Google, now named as Waymo, alleges Anthony Levandowski had downloaded 14,000 files from Google before quitting and to start his own autonomous car company called Otto.

In August 2016 Otto was acquired by Uber for $680 million.

Waymo has filed a complaint in a federal court in San Francisco saying the two companies have taken their intellectual property to avoid incurring risk, time and expense of independently developing their own technology.

Waymo also mentioned other Google employees too downloaded more trade secrets before leaving the company to join Otto.

The Waymo filing accuses Uber of infringing on patents, stealing trade secrets and competing unfairly to catch up the autonomous technology in car industry.

Levandowski worked with Google for about nine years and seven months after starting Otto he sold it to Uber. He is now a prominent figure in the world of autonomous vehicles.

Otto was co-founded by Lior Ron.

Levandowski is the vice president of Uber’s self-driving technology and reports to Travis Kalanick.

Meanwhile, early investors in Uber, Mitch and Freada Kapor, said it is frustrating the company is unable to change its culture even after they are helping it in the development of driverless cars.