Waymo Asks Court to Block Uber’s Self-Driving Car Project -
By DAISUKE WAKABAYASHIMARCH 10, 2017
SAN FRANCISCO — Waymo, the self-driving car business spun out of Google’s parent company last year, asked a federal court
on Friday to block Uber’s work on a competing self-driving vehicle that Waymo claimed could be using stolen technology.
In another partially redacted declaration filed with the court, Pierre-Yves Droz, a hardware engineer at Waymo, said Mr. Levandowski, while still with Google, told him
that he wanted long-range lidar for his start-up and that he wanted to “replicate” Waymo’s technology.
Waymo also filed testimony from employees and a Google security engineer describing how Anthony Levandowski, a former Google executive, discussed Uber’s interest in the technology
and systematically stole proprietary company documents.
Mr. Droz said this did not surprise him because Mr. Levandowski had told him earlier
that he wanted to start a self-driving car company and that Uber would be interested in “buying the team” responsible for the lidar being developed at Google.
Waymo sued Uber last month, accusing the ride-hailing company of colluding with Mr. Levandowski to
steal crucial parts of Waymo’s technology to accelerate its development of autonomous vehicles.
