Uber Technologies Inc acknowledged hiring a former Google engineer — now accused of stealing self-driving car technology — despite having received warnings that he was still carrying around some of his former employer’s property.
The admission, contained in a court filing made on Thursday, is the latest twist in a legal fight between the ride-hailing company and a Google spin-off, Waymo.
Both companies are battling to build self-driving cars that could reshape the way people travel.
Waymo alleges that Anthony Levandowski, the former Google engineer at the crux of the case, stole its trade secrets before departing in January last year to found a robotic vehicle start-up that Uber acquired seven months later.
The lawsuit maintains that Uber then transplanted the intellectual property allegedly stolen by Levandowski into its own fleet of self-driving vehicles — a charge that Uber has adamantly denied since Waymo filed its complaint in US Federal Court four months ago.
Last month, US District Judge William Alsup ordered Uber to return the stolen files, writing that evidence indicated the company “knew or should have known that he possessed over 14,000 confidential Waymo files.”
Now, Uber has for the first time has acknowledged that Levandowski five months before joining Uber informed its now-departed CEO Travis Kalanick that Levandowski had five disks filled with Google’s information.
The disclosure, made in March last year, lends credence to Waymo’s allegation that Levandowski downloaded 14,000 documents onto a computer before leaving Google.
Uber said that Kalanick told Levandowski not to bring any of the Google information with him to Uber.
At that time, a deal had been reached for Uber to buy Levandowski’s start-up, Otto, for US$680 million, although the acquisition was not completed until August last year.
The filing asserts that Levandowski destroyed the disks containing Google’s material not long after Kalanick told him that Uber did not want it.
Levandowski’s lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
They have been advising Levandowski to assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination since Waymo filed its lawsuit.
Based on the evidence he has seen so far, Alsup has referred the case to the US Department of Justice for a potential criminal probe.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained