Speaker 1: Google startup company Weymo and car service company Uber are
Speaker 1: gearing up for a massive court battle, and it all
Speaker 1: has to do with self driving cars. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: and this is tech stuff. Daily lawsuits focusing on intellectual
Speaker 1: property are fairly common in the text sphere. For example,
Speaker 1: Apple and Samsung have waged global war against one another
Speaker 1: in various courtrooms with claims and counterclaims of IP theft.
Speaker 1: But there's a face off that has been garnering more
Speaker 1: attention in the technosphere over the course of it pits
Speaker 1: Weymo against Uber. Weymo is a spinoff company from Google.
Speaker 1: It got its start as Google's self driving research and
Speaker 1: development team. Today it's one of several companies under the
Speaker 1: umbrella of Google's parent company, Alphabet. Uber is the car
Speaker 1: service company that has been fighting pr battles on multiple
Speaker 1: fronts over the last couple of years. Company executives have
Speaker 1: faced tough questions about sexual harassment, background checks on Uber drivers,
Speaker 1: the number of hours drivers work during a week, and more.
Speaker 1: But this particular battle focuses on valuable information and technology
Speaker 1: for self driving cars. Much of the case depends upon
Speaker 1: the actions of Anthony Lewandowski He's an engineer who used
Speaker 1: to work for Google's self driving car team before he
Speaker 1: left the company to found his own startup called Auto
Speaker 1: O t t O. The startups goal was to create
Speaker 1: self driving trucks, something many experts believe is an inevitability
Speaker 1: that will disrupt the shipping industry. Lewandowski's history with autonomous
Speaker 1: vehicles dates back to two thousand four, when the Defense
Speaker 1: Advanced Research Projects Agency a k A DARPA held the
Speaker 1: Grand Challenge. This was a race that picked teams against
Speaker 1: each other to build autonomous vehicles capable of racing against
Speaker 1: the clock in a desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: Lewandowski's team designed a self driving motorcycle. It didn't win,
Speaker 1: but it did turn a lot of heads. He went
Speaker 1: on to work with Sebastian Thrunn, who led us Stanford
Speaker 1: University team to a victory in the second DARPA Grand Challenge.
Speaker 1: Thrond's team, including Lewandowski, were brought on to Google after
Speaker 1: the company acquired a tool the team had built that
Speaker 1: served as one of the pillars for Google's street View project.
Speaker 1: When Google began to explore the possibilities of autonomous vehicles,
Speaker 1: Lewandowski was an instrumental part of the team, but he
Speaker 1: became restless and started to look at creating a new
Speaker 1: startup company in the self driving vehicle space in two
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen. That was also the year Google valuated the
Speaker 1: self driving car project at four point five billion dollars,
Speaker 1: which meant Lewandowski earned a fifty million dollar bonus. Lewandowski
Speaker 1: left Google and launched Auto in May. Later, Google executives
Speaker 1: began to investigate Lewandowski's departure. At least one executive previously
Speaker 1: suggested to human resources that Lewandowski be terminated from his position,
Speaker 1: citing some suspect behavior. Google claims the investigation discovered that
Speaker 1: Lewandowski had downloaded some fourteen thousand confidential files to a
Speaker 1: personal computer before leaving Google. These files represented an enormous
Speaker 1: amount of research and tech in the autonomous vehicle field,
Speaker 1: including a great deal about lidar. That's a laser based
Speaker 1: sensing and guidance system that Google self driving vehicles rely
Speaker 1: upon for navigation and environment detection. But where does Uber
Speaker 1: come in. Lewandowski apparently did some consulting work with Uber
Speaker 1: in sixteen, and the company eventually hired him and acquired
Speaker 1: his company Otto for a reported six hundred eighty million dollars,
Speaker 1: though Uber disputes this amount. Google's self driving car division
Speaker 1: at this point, known as Weymo, began to investigate the
Speaker 1: possibility that Lewandowski and Uber came to this agreement largely
Speaker 1: because of the proprietary information Lewandowski was privy to. Uber
Speaker 1: denies these allegations. Lewandowski has executed his Fifth Amendment rights,
Speaker 1: protecting him again self incrimination, and won't speak to authorities. Recently,
Speaker 1: a former Uber employee named Richard Jacobs stirred the pot
Speaker 1: when the U. S. Attorney's Office took a piece of
Speaker 1: evidence from an employment dispute between Jacobs and Uber and
Speaker 1: submitted it to the Weymo versus Uber case. That evidence
Speaker 1: was a thirty seven page letter written by Jacobs's lawyer,
Speaker 1: and it had some pretty damning evidence in it. In
Speaker 1: that letter, there are claims that Uber had dedicated teams
Speaker 1: and resources specifically to gaining access to trade secrets from competitors,
Speaker 1: trade secrets like the ones included in those fourteen thousand
Speaker 1: files Lewandowski saved to his personal machine. Uber disputes the
Speaker 1: claims in the letter, but the company also paid a
Speaker 1: settlement to Jacobs to the tune of four point five
Speaker 1: million dollars, with another three million dollars going to Jacobs's lawyer.
Speaker 1: Paying seven point five million dollars to settle a dispute
Speaker 1: makes it sound like there may have been something to
Speaker 1: worry about in those allegations. Nothing yet has been proven
Speaker 1: in court. However, the story is even more complicated than
Speaker 1: what I've laid out, and there are other interesting tangential elements.
Speaker 1: For example, Lewandowski recently founded a nonprofit organization called Way
Speaker 1: of the Future, a religious organization with the goal to
Speaker 1: quote develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based
Speaker 1: on artificial intelligence, and through understanding and worship of the Godhead,
Speaker 1: contribute to the betterment of society end quote. Something tells
Speaker 1: me I should probably dedicate an entire episode to just
Speaker 1: that little nugget of news. To learn more about some
Speaker 1: of the craziest legal battles in tech, as well as
Speaker 1: how this technology actually works. Subscribe to the Tech Stuff podcast,
Speaker 1: we published twice a week on Wednesdays and Fridays, and
Speaker 1: we take a closer look at all this chaos in
Speaker 1: an effort to make some sense out of it I'll
Speaker 1: see you again soon.