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Uber executive and Otto co-founder Anthony Levandowski is asserting his Fifth Amendment rights in regard to a lawsuit filed by Waymo against Uber, which accuses the company and Levandowski of stealing technology related to autonomous vehicles from the Google self-driving car project prior to his departure. A lawyer for Levandowski told the court that the engineer would exercise his Fifth Amendment rights broadly because there exists \u201cpotential for criminal action\u201d which could lead to self-incrimination, as reported by The New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n In court transcripts from a Thursday hearing reviewed by TechCrunch, Levandowski\u2019s lawyer invokes the amendment in what appears to be a precaution related to a document release by Uber. Uber\u2019s lawyers claim that the company doesn\u2019t have the documents Levandowski allegedly stole from Waymo and therefore won\u2019t be handing them over tomorrow as part of a scheduled document production.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re broadly asserting Mr. Levandowski\u2019s Fifth Amendment rights as to any documents he may possess and control that are of relevance to this action,\u201d a lawyer for Levandowski told the court.\u00a0Levandowski\u2019s assertion of his Fifth Amendment privilege\u00a0could change, however, as the case moves forward.<\/p>\n Levandowski\u2019s acknowledgement of his potential criminal liability is another\u00a0interesting turn in what has been a dramatic court proceeding thus far between the two companies. Waymo claims that Levandowski stole thousands of confidential documents\u00a0from the company (when it was still Google\u2019s self-driving car project, during which time Levandowski was employed there), and then took steps to cover up the theft.<\/p>\n So far, Uber has focused its defense on questioning\u00a0why Waymo has not handled this apparent violation of Levandowski\u2019s\u00a0employment agreement via arbitration, which is the means it contractually requires for dealing with disputes with employees. It was revealed earlier this week that Waymo did indeed pursue arbitration against Levandowski<\/a> in October, prior to filing suit against his employer this February. That action focused on accusations of employee poaching, however, and left out the claims of proprietary information theft, which Uber says should also be subject to arbitration.<\/p>\n Although Uber has worked to distance itself from Levandowski, Judge William Alsup indicated during the hearing that he was inclined to stop Uber from using any technology copied from Google as the case progresses.<\/p>\n \u201cSome of the things in your motion are bogus. You\u2019ve got things in there like lists of suppliers as trade secrets. Come on. It undermines the whole thing,\u201d he told Waymo, according to the transcript. However, Judge Alsup also warned Uber about the gravity of Waymo\u2019s allegations. \u201cThere are some things in that motion that are very serious. They are genuine trade secrets. And if you don\u2019t come in with a denial, you\u2019re probably looking at a preliminary injunction,\u201d he told Uber.<\/p>\n \u201cIf his truck driving company gets shut down because of theft of trade secrets on a record that he\u2019s not willing to deny, too bad for him. Too bad. Listen, I\u2019m not sympathetic to it. You represent somebody who\u2019s in a mess,\u201d Alsup told Levandowski\u2019s attorney.<\/p>\n Judge Alsup\u00a0had previously\u00a0criticized Uber for making heavy redactions of documents it submitted to the court<\/a> relevant to the case. (Uber later claimed that Waymo had asked for the redactions.)<\/p>\n Uber Associate General Counsel Angela Padilla provided the following statement regarding the case, when we contacted the company for response:<\/p>\n We look forward to our first public response laying out our case on\u00a0Friday, April 7<\/span><\/span>. We are very confident that Waymo\u2019s claims against Uber are baseless and that Anthony Levandowski has not used any files from Google in his work with Otto or Uber.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n
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Uber executive and Otto co-founder Anthony Levandowski is asserting his Fifth Amendment rights in regard to a lawsuit filed by Waymo against Uber, which accuses the company and Levandowski of stealing technology related to autonomous vehicles from the Google self-driving car project prior to his departure. Read More<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/img><\/a>
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