Yesterday it was reported that Alphabet’s self-driving division Waymo filed a lawsuit against Otto and Uber, alleging the Otto stole Waymo’s lidar design to be used in their self-driving cars, and because Uber owns Otto, it seems that they were dragged along into the lawsuit. Unsurprisingly Uber has since responded with a statement of their own, denying any wrongdoing.In a statement provided to Business Insider (via 9to5Google), Uber says, “We are incredibly proud of the progress that our team has made. We have reviewed Waymo’s claims and determined them to be a baseless attempt to slow down a competitor and we look forward to vigorously defending against them in court. In the meantime, we will continue our hard work to bring self-driving benefits to the world.”
For those learning about this for the first time, Waymo claims that Otto’s co-founder who was formerly working for Google’s self-driving division before it was known as Waymo, downloaded confidential files before he had quit, and one of those files was a design for the lidar system that Waymo claims is a proprietary design that belongs to them.
That being said, Waymo is now seeking damages as a result of the alleged theft, but given that Uber has pretty much denied any wrongdoing, we wouldn’t be surprised if this lawsuit were to be dragged out.
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