US federal appeals court denies Uber's request to move Waymo trial to private arbitration, says Uber must produce due diligence report from Otto acquisition
Context & Ripple Effects
Uber has spent months trying to move Waymo's trade secrets suit out of public view: a district judge already rejected its private arbitration bid in May and referred the matter to the DOJ, and discovery has since cut both ways, with a magistrate ordering Waymo to hand over details of its Lyft deal. Today's appeals court ruling forecloses the last procedural exit — the case stays in open court, and Uber must produce the due diligence report from the Otto acquisition.
That document matters because Waymo's theory is that Uber should have known what Otto brought with it: an earlier ruling forced the unredacted Otto term sheet into Waymo's hands, and the due diligence file is the remaining piece showing what Uber's own reviewers saw before closing the deal.
First-order effects
- Uber must surrender the Otto acquisition due diligence report, giving Waymo direct access to what Uber knew about Otto's self-driving work before buying it.
- The trial proceeds before a public district court rather than a private arbitrator, keeping every filing and ruling on the record.
Second-order effects
- Once produced, the report becomes trial evidence against Uber — as later coverage shows, the due diligence report was made public under the lawsuit, turning Uber's own pre-acquisition review into a roadmap of what it did or didn't investigate.
- Waymo's reciprocal disclosure obligations on its Lyft deal mean both companies' partnership terms are being exposed through discovery, raising the cost of litigating rather than settling.
Third-order effects
- If courts keep routing founder-employment IP disputes into public discovery, acquisition due diligence files become standard evidence in trade secrets cases — acquirers of talent-heavy startups face liability exposure based on what their own pre-deal reviews documented.
- The pattern points toward weaker enforceability of private arbitration clauses in disputes with broad public-interest stakes, pushing high-profile tech litigation back into open court.
The trend: Courts are steadily pulling autonomous-driving IP disputes out of private arbitration and into public discovery, where the acquirer's own due diligence becomes the central exhibit.