In a new direction dated Nov. 2, Judge William Alsup said that Google’s self-driving arm Waymo cannot attempt one of the nine trade secrets it had attacked Uber of misappropriating. The organization had already been required to narrow its more than 120 trade secrets down to nine.
The judge said, among other matters, that the expert judgment that Google used to assert this claim was untrue. While the other eight trade secrets continue intact, it’s worth mentioning this was the same authority that Waymo relied on to incarnate those claims.
It’s an exciting development in the ongoing legal saga between Alphabet and Uber, the ride-hailing organization in which it owns a significant stake.
Google has accused Uber of using self-driving trade codes and proprietary data that its former top self-driving cars engineer Anthony Levandowski supposedly stole before selling his new company to Uber. Levandowski has because been fired from Uber, which has also seen heavy executive turnover this year, including a dramatic CEO change.
Earlier this fall, Google famously secured a two-month delay of the trial, arguing that there was a “mass” of new evidence in a recently opened due diligence document that it needed to pursue. Specifically, the business said it needed the time to learn if the new evidence could help identify additional trade secret claims.
The judge denied Alphabet’s request to add two software-based trade secret cases that came out of the due diligence report. The company is, however, provided to pursue those additional claims in a separate trial if it chooses.
“Waymo’s case continues to shrink,” an Uber spokesperson said. “After abandoning their patent claims, this week Waymo lost one of the trade codes they claimed was most important, had their damages expert rejected, and saw an entire defendant removed from the situation and all this before the trial has even started.”
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