Waymo Scales Back Claims Against Uber in Driverless Car Dispute – New York Times

Waymos dropping of three patent claims against Uber weakens its original argument for bringing the suit. Still, each side called the latest legal move a victory.

Waymo said it agreed to scale back its patent claims because Uber had halted work on a lidar design that violated Waymos patents and is proceeding with a different design. Waymo is permitted to reassert its claims if Uber returns to the design that Waymo challenged. The company said Ubers current lidar design still violates one of its original patents.

We continue to pursue a patent claim against Ubers current generation device and our trade secret claims, which are not at all affected by this stipulated dismissal, Waymo said in a statement. We look forward to trial.

In a statement, Uber said the dropping of the three claims was yet another sign of Waymo overreaching and not delivering on its claims.

Last month, Waymo received a signal from federal court that the patent claims were not its strongest legal argument in the case. Judge William Alsup of Federal District Court in San Francisco, who is overseeing the case, urged the companys lawyers at a hearing on June 7 to drop the patent claims because youre going to lose on all these patent claims unless you pull some rabbit out of a hat.

Lately, Uber has been trying to distance itself from the actions of Mr. Levandowski, the former head of Googles driverless car project who joined Uber last year.

Waymo has said that Mr. Levandowski worked with Uber to steal proprietary information from Google before joining Uber. Waymo said Uber was aware that Mr. Levandowski had stolen files from Waymo.

Uber said it expressly told Mr. Levandowski to not bring any stolen documents to the company or apply any of Waymos intellectual property to Ubers autonomous vehicle efforts. The company said Waymos lawyers have not found the stolen documents in Ubers possession, despite extensive discovery.

The matter has been complicated by Mr. Levandowskis assertion of his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. Uber said it had urged him to cooperate with Waymos lawyers and fired him when he continued to refuse.

In a separate filing on Friday, Uber said Mr. Levandowski, before invoking his Fifth Amendment right, told Travis Kalanick, then Ubers chief executive, that he had downloaded the documents from Google because he was worried that he might not receive full payment of a $120 million bonus owed to him. Uber said this indicated that his actions were unrelated to his work at Uber.

A Waymo spokesman called Ubers claim fictitious and an attempt to distract from evidence showing that Mr. Levandowski met with Uber executives within 24 hours of downloading proprietary Google information.

A version of this article appears in print on July 8, 2017, on Page B5 of the New York edition with the headline: Waymo Drops 3 Claims in Suit Against Uber on Driverless Cars.

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Waymo Scales Back Claims Against Uber in Driverless Car Dispute - New York Times