Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
After a three-year battle in which he spent up to $1000 an hour on lawyers, Swildens ended up selling Speedera at a discount to Akamai for $130 million.
The experience left Swildens with a working knowledge of intellectual property battles in the tech world, and a lingering soft spot for others facing hefty patent claims. So when he heard in February that the world's second-most valuable company, Alphabet, was launching a legal broadside at Uber's self-driving car technology, he put himself in then-CEO Travis Kalanick's shoes: "I saw a larger competitor attacking a smaller competitor...and became curious about the patents involved."
In its most dramatic allegations, Waymo is accusing engineer Anthony Levandowski of taking over 14,000 technical confidential files to Uber. But the company also claimed that Uber's laser-ranging lidar devices infringed four of Waymo's patents.
"Waymo developed its patented inventions...at great expense, and through years of painstaking research, experimentation, and trial and error," the complaint read. "If [Uber is] not enjoined from their infringement and misappropriation, they will cause severe and irreparable harm to Waymo."
But Swildens had a suspicion. He dug into the history of Waymo's lidars, and came to the conclusion that Waymo's key patent should never have been granted at all. He asked the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to look into its validity, and in early September, the USPTO granted that request. Days later, Waymo abruptly dismissed its patent claim without explanation. The USPTO examiners may still invalidate that patent, and if that happens, Waymo could find itself embroiled in another multi-billion-dollar self-driving car lawsuit—this time as a defendant.
Related Stories
Engineer spends $6,000 invalidating Waymo's lidar patents
An engineer with no connection to the self-driving industry has spent $6,000 of his own money to stop Alphabet's self-driving car business Waymo from patenting key technology. Following a challenge filed by Eric Swildens, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) rejected 53 out of 56 claims in Waymo's 936 patent. The reason for his action? He just "couldn't imagine the [lidar] circuit [described in the 936 patent] didn't exist prior," Ars Technica reported.
Filed in 2013 and granted in 2016, the 936 patent was a cornerstone of Waymo's lawsuit against Uber, which began in December 2016. In a nutshell, Waymo accused the ride-hailing giant of infringing its lidar design patent and using intellectual property allegedly stolen by engineer Anthony Levandowski. Uber eventually agreed to redesign its lidar and gave Waymo $245 million worth of equity to settle the rest of the lawsuit. It also promised not to copy Waymo's technology in the future.
Uber got slammed for nothing!
Previously: A Spectator Who Threw A Wrench In The Waymo/Uber Lawsuit
Waymo and Uber Abruptly Settle for $245 Million
Related: Waymo's Case Against Uber "Shrinks" After Trade Secret Claim Thrown Out
Waymo v. Uber Jury Trial Begins
A redacted copy of the letter that caused the Waymo v. Uber trial to be delayed (again) has been released:
At first glance, the Jacobs letter [is] an incredibly detailed accounting of multiple unlawful actions by the ride-hail company. He alleges that Uber's secretive Strategic Services Group (SSG) "frequently engaged in fraud and theft, and employed third-party vendors to obtain unauthorized data or information." He also accuses Uber security officers of "hacking" and "destruction of evidence related to eavesdropping against opposition groups." And he says Uber's ex-CEO Travis Kalanick knew about a lot of it.
Another Uber employee, Nicholas Gicinto, along with SSG, conducted "virtual operations impersonating protesters, Uber partner-drivers, and taxi operators." These Uber security employees went to great lengths to hide their surveillance activities from the authorities, Jacobs says. They used computers not purchased by Uber that ran on Mi-Fi devices, so the traffic wouldn't appear on Uber's network. They also used virtual public networks and "non-attributable architecture of contracted Amazon Web Services" to further conceal their efforts, Jacobs alleges. Who were they surveilling? Jacobs says SSG's targets included "politicians, regulators, law enforcement, taxi organizations, and labor unions in, at a minimum, the US."
And then there was Uber's innocuously named Marketplace Analytics team. Jacobs says this group was responsible for "acquiring trade secrets, codebase, and competitive intelligence... from major ridesharing competitors globally." According to Jacobs, Marketplace Analytics impersonated riders and drivers on competitor platforms, hacked into competitor networks, and conducted unlawful wiretapping.
In one of the weirder sections, Jacobs alleges that Uber's surveillance team infiltrated a private event space at a hotel and spied on the executives of a rival company so they could observe, in real time, their reactions to the news that Uber had received a massive $3.5 billion investment from Saudi Arabia. That eavesdropping was directed by ex-Uber security chief Joe Sullivan at the behest of Kalanick, Jacobs says.
Uber calls Richard "Ric" Jacobs "an extortionist", but the judge in the case disagrees.
Previously: Uber Evaded Law Enforcement With "Greyball"
Real-Life Example of Uber's Regulator-Evading Software
A Spectator Who Threw A Wrench In The Waymo/Uber Lawsuit
The Waymo v. Uber jury trial is set to begin Monday and is expected to end during the week of February 19. It's not a matter of good vs. evil:
"The trial will be a trial on Waymo's claims of trade secret misappropriation, not a trial on Uber's litigation practices or corporate culture," Judge Alsup wrote on January 30.
[...] Alsup went on to say that both sides have engaged in "half-truths and other slick litigation conduct" and that Waymo, which has "whined—often without good reason—at every turn in this case," essentially needs to put up or shut up.
"To repeat, the central issue in this case remains whether or not Uber misappropriated Waymo's trade secrets, not whether or not Uber is an evil corporation," the judge continued. "Waymo's decision to devote so much time and effort to pursuing matters with so little connection to the merits raises the troubling possibility that Waymo is unwilling or unable to prove up a solid case on the merits and instead seeks to inflame the jury against Uber with a litany of supposed bad acts."
Also at The Verge and FT (paywalled).
Previously: Waymo v. Uber Continues, Will Not Move to Arbitration
Waymo's Case Against Uber "Shrinks" After Trade Secret Claim Thrown Out
Uber v. Waymo Trial Delayed Because Uber Withheld Evidence
A Spectator Who Threw A Wrench In The Waymo/Uber Lawsuit
Related: Uber Letter Alleges Surveillance on Politicians and Competitors
The Fall of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick
Waymo Orders Thousands More Chrysler Pacifica Minivans for Driverless Fleet
Uber is just too underhanded to play the underdog against Waymo
The most remarkable thing about Waymo v. Uber is that so many of the people following the lawsuit are essentially rooting for Google to crush a smaller firm with a lawsuit. It's a tale as old as time: a maverick upstart galls a bigger, more established competitor, and the bigger guy strikes back in the courts. It's practically an American fairy tale, and yet Uber's lawyers are hard-pressed to get this archetypal narrative to stick. Nobody sees Uber as the underdog.
For one thing, through a collision of multiple scandals, Uber has become extraordinarily unpopular, and the discovery process in this lawsuit hasn't done much to alleviate its reputation as an unethical, underhanded company. But the other part is that the supposed maverick upstart hasn't managed to get one over the complacent megacorporation.
Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick says that Google is (and was) in the lead when it comes to self-driving cars.
Charles Verhoeven, lead attorney for Waymo, ended his questioning of Kalanick by asking him about a note that said, "Cheat codes. Find them. Use them."
When Waymo attorney Charles Verhoeven took over again to interrogate him, he returned to cheat codes. "In the context of video games, you know what a cheat code is?"
"Yes," Kalanick replied. "But those codes in those games are put there on purpose by the publisher of the games and they want the players to have them. It's part of the fun of the game."
"That's just the game," he added, before Verhoeven could continue.
Verhoeven tried again, "A cheat code allows you to skip ahead, allows you to skip a level and not do the work."
"No — " Kalanick began to say, before Verhoeven quickly turned to the judge and said, "That's it, your honor." And with that, Travis Kalanick exited the courtroom.
Verhoeven was also able to play the "Greed is Good" scene from the 1987 film Wall Street for the jury because Anthony Levandowski (the engineer accused of stealing trade secrets from Waymo) had sent a link to it to Kalanick.
Previously: Text Messages Between Uber's Travis Kalanick and Anthony Levandowski Released
Waymo's Case Against Uber "Shrinks" After Trade Secret Claim Thrown Out
Uber v. Waymo Trial Delayed Because Uber Withheld Evidence
A Spectator Who Threw A Wrench In The Waymo/Uber Lawsuit
Waymo v. Uber Jury Trial Begins
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Virindi on Sunday December 10 2017, @04:44AM (5 children)
A lot of patents these days should never be granted, because obvious prior art exists or because they trivially apply an existing idea from one field to another. That is hardly news, though it is a continuing sore spot for those who want to actually build things who don't have millions of dollars of legal team on standby...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by pipedwho on Sunday December 10 2017, @09:46AM (4 children)
I had to moderate this Insightful even though you're already at +5 with only two other posts.
This is so true, and a huge problem for people actually inventing and creating things. The bar on patent acceptance is FAR TOO LOW. A 'scintilla of inventiveness' as the the current point where a patent seems to get approved is patently ridiculous. They don't need to tear down the system, they just need to stop approving patents that aren't plainly obvious.
Patents should really be limited to something that might be lost to humanity should the technique never be used in the real world should it never be disclosed. Or at least something that would otherwise not be 'parallel invented' during the life of the possibly granted patent. The shorter the duration of the patent, the more leeway the patentee could be given. In most cases patents pop up for things that numerous competitors are working on with innovations that are pretty much straight forward solutions to any engineer that even considers the problem. That sort of patent could be granted with a 1 year duration. Something more complex and non-obvious could get a little more. Something totally left field, like a successful method for portable fusion power could get the full 20 years. But, if that same fusion power system was simply inspired by the sudden appearance of a couple of precursors in the current state of the art, then the patent rush that ensued should guarantee a much shorter duration. Emergent technologies and techniques should not be patentable as they are simply the inevitable combination of ideas that are naturally evolving towards a final solution.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Sunday December 10 2017, @09:41PM (2 children)
As far as I understand, the patent office makes money by granting office. It doesn't make money by rejecting patents. And I've never heard about a penalty against it for granting patents that should not have been granted.
I think the result isn't surprising at all.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday December 10 2017, @09:43PM
Err … I of course mean they make money by granting patents!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 10 2017, @10:04PM
Is there a fee to get your patent approved, or is it just a fee to get your patent reviewed? One case=massive corruption, other=normal corruption (may or may not be massive)
(Score: 2) by Virindi on Sunday December 10 2017, @11:49PM
I believe a large part of the reason for this is that the patent office is not sufficiently adversarial.
Put yourself in the shoes of an examiner for a moment. You are tasked with reviewing a patent that has a questionable level of inventiveness, submitted by superbigco.
If you decide to reject the patent, you have to have all your ducks in a row. You need to carefully lay out and research a strong case for rejection. Your decision is up against a multimillion dollar team of patent lawyers who will attack your every reasoning.
Or, say you decide to accept the patent. All you have to do is accept the reasoning you have been given and rubber stamp it.
Assuming you are paid not by the result, but even by the number of processed applications, you have an obvious incentive to accept rather than reject. Even if you are paid a salary that is independent of your processing rate, the patent office always has a backlog and lack of funding so there will still be plenty of pressure to move them through faster. Add to that, that your boss probably plays golf with the execs from superbigco, and it is easy to see that rejecting patents is a sucker's move.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 10 2017, @06:28AM (2 children)
But, Waymo didn't give a small damn about any harm caused to Uber, with their baseless allegations. Corporate ethics suck ass.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Bot on Sunday December 10 2017, @09:10AM
Corporations' ethic "if you can get away with it, it is good" is indirectly taught to the management class by what is called "the market", or "the real world". Truth is, they shaped the world, not the other way round.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 10 2017, @11:34PM
oxymoron [google.com]
(Think: jumbo shrimp; military intelligence; honest politician)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]