Waymo drops 3 of 4 patent infringement claims against Uber, says Uber no longer uses infringing tech; bulk of the case related to trade secrets theft remains
Waymo, Alphabet Inc.'s self-driving car division, dropped three of four patent infringement claims in its lawsuit against Uber Technologies Inc …
Context & Ripple Effects
The patent claims were always the narrower half of Waymo's suit. Uber had already answered in an April court filing that it never received the documents Anthony Levandowski downloaded and that its Lidar design differs — and the patent claims, unlike the trade-secrets claims, depended on proving Uber's hardware actually copied Waymo's.
By dropping three of the four patent counts and conceding Uber no longer uses the allegedly infringing technology, Waymo is concentrating the case on the trade-secrets theft it considers the real prize — the theory behind the $2.6B damages demand Uber's lawyer disclosed in September, and the claim set that went to trial with opening slides in February 2018.
First-order effects
- Uber's immediate patent exposure collapses to a single claim on technology it no longer uses, while the trade-secrets case — the one carrying the billion-dollar damages theory — proceeds undiluted toward trial.
Second-order effects
- With the patent counts gone, Uber's defense narrows to disputing what Levandowski took and whether it reached Uber's Lidar program, and Waymo's escalating damages figure raises the settlement pressure on Uber as the trial date approaches.
Third-order effects
- The pattern — an engineer leaving with downloaded files, and the acquirer inheriting the litigation — is hardening into a standard risk of the autonomous-vehicle talent wars, where hiring a star engineer can cost the hiring company a slice of equity or a damages bill.
The trend: Autonomous-vehicle competition is increasingly fought in court over trade secrets carried by poached engineers, with damages claims and equity settlements replacing patent fights as the main legal weapon.