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Ahead of a deposition in the Waymo v. Uber case, Travis Kalanick has hired the San Francisco-based litigator Melinda Haag:
Uber's former chief executive, Travis Kalanick, has hired the former top federal prosecutor in San Francisco to represent him ahead of a deposition in a high-profile trade secrets case against Alphabet's Waymo self-driving car unit, the attorney's firm said on Wednesday.
Melinda Haag, who served as U.S. attorney in Northern California under President Barack Obama, now practices white-collar defense law at the Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe firm. She and a partner, Walter Brown, are representing Kalanick, Orrick spokesman Howard Mintz said.
Mintz declined to discuss the scope of Orrick's representation of Kalanick, who currently serves on Uber's board. A Kalanick representative could not immediately be reached for comment.
Kalanick is scheduled to be interviewed under oath by Waymo lawyers this week, Waymo attorney David Perlson said at a court hearing on Wednesday.
Kalanick isn't the only one facing deposition:
In the latest hearing in the Uber vs. Waymo lawsuit on Wednesday, San Francisco district judge William Alsup addressed Uber's complaint that Google co-founder Sergey Brin is trying to avoid deposition.
Alsup said, "you go back and tell that guy he better show up," after voicing frustration at Alphabet executives claiming they are "too busy." Brin is currently the president of Alphabet, the holding company that includes both Google and Waymo, the self-driving car unit that was spun out of Google.
Also at Bloomberg.
Previously: Waymo Drops Three of Four Patent Claims Against Uber
(Score: 3, Informative) by PocketSizeSUn on Thursday July 27 2017, @04:31PM (1 child)
When I read through:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Levandowski [wikipedia.org]
I am left with the singular impression that Levandowski has been working on self driving vehicles since he started in collage, and he's pretty good at.
He appears to have developed and demonstrated what is now Googles's trade secret, spinning LIDAR out side of Google as part of his 510 Systems startup. Presumably because until he had a working prototype nobody at Google was going to fund his self-driving moonshot.
So all this over a trade-secret that was, essentially, developed by Levandowski. My understanding of trade-secrets is there is not real legal protection from keeping other people from knowing your secret. It's certainly difficult when your trade-secret was purchased from someone you can't seem to keep 'happy'.
The only person Google could possibly sue is Levandowski himself depending entirely on what sort of NDA/Non-compete he signed with Google. And based on his DARPA challenge motorcycle and 510 Systems it's really hard to see a Non-compete fly.
So at most Google could sue for an NDA breach, it there even is an NDA.
Clearly suing Levandowski would be both bad publicity and accomplish nothing to keep the 'trade-secret' from staying secret.
In the end this may push other LIDAR options forward (if Google succeeds).
My option is that is's more likely to be the case the Spinning LIDAR work will move forward and the de-facto keystone in self-driving tech.
Fallback options would include fixed mounted flash LIDAR but the solution is complicated by calibration and communication that is transparent to a single gyro/spinning camera -- especially so in the retro-fit arena.
The current LIDARs biggest impediment is still the cost, which will drop dramatically once a common design is flushed out and mass production hits.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @05:00PM
Papier-mâché [wikipedia.org] cars?