from the money-for-nothing-and-your-chips-go-free dept.
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
Related Stories
Google/Alphabet/Waymo's case against Uber has been dealt a setback following a number of unfavorable rulings:
A federal judge threw out a key trade-secret theft claim in the Alphabet Inc.'s unit lawsuit alleging that one of its former engineers schemed with the ride-hailing giant to steal critical know-how. The judge also rejected a technical analysis by one of Waymo's expert witnesses. In addition, he dismissed one of the defendants in the case, which will put more pressure on Waymo to prove that Uber itself engaged in misconduct independent of whether the engineer misappropriated proprietary information.
Legal experts said they can't read too much into the judge's ruling narrowing the list of trade secrets to be presented to a jury to eight from nine because many of the court documents describing the details of each secret are sealed from public view. The dismissal of the one claim won't reduce the $1.86 billion in damages Waymo is seeking because that figure is based on a different trade secret. Waymo was originally pursuing 121 separate claims but was ordered by Alsup to whittle them down to keep the case from becoming unwieldy.
[...] A spokesman for Uber said the rulings point to Waymo's "ever-shrinking case." [...] Waymo said in an emailed statement its inspections of Uber's devices, photos and digital drawings show Uber is using Waymo's trade secrets and copied its LiDAR designs "down to the micron."
Also at Recode and Ars Technica.
Previously: Waymo Drops Three of Four Patent Claims Against Uber
Text Messages Between Uber's Travis Kalanick and Anthony Levandowski Released
Waymo v. Uber Continues, Will Not Move to Arbitration
Alphabet Seeking $2.6 Billion in Damages From Uber
Related: Alphabet Leads $1 Billion Round of Investment in Lyft
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.
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
I hope you haven't invested in too much popcorn for the Waymo and Uber Saga. They settled with a $244 Million dollar payout to Waymo. Would have been interesting to see the whole thing play out. Though, I guess it's not terribly surprising, considering how many times I've gotten Jury summons just to be told that I won't be needed. Horror of horrors, I actually had to drive to the courthouse once, before the parties settled.
Details at Wired, Reuters, TheVerge and The New York Times.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday October 03 2018, @09:40AM (2 children)
if Waymo had suspected the patent might have been invalid, would they have been able to use that in their defence?
Any chance Waymo can get the $245 million back?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Wednesday October 03 2018, @11:25AM
Why? I hear the higher education is not free in US.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @06:10PM
I am not a lawyer, and I don't know the details of the lawsuit.
Note that patents are different than copyright, and other forms of IP. Even if the patent is invalid, if Uber did copy code, it's still illegal.
For example, the bubblesort algorithm is clearly not patent-able (... well, shouldn't be... who knows what the PTO says). However, if I write my own bubblesort, and then somebody else comes and copy-pastes it, then I could still file some lawsuit them against them for copyright infringement, theft, or something else.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @10:49AM (1 child)
And this engineer deserves a fucking medal!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @06:32PM
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 03 2018, @01:00PM (2 children)
You can bet that if the engineers at Uber could prove that they developed their circuits independently of Waymo's designs, they would have fought that case and won.
This form of IP protection is good, IMO - engineers leaving Waymo with a copy of the company's work on a thumb drive, then leaning heavily on those designs to develop the same system for Uber is theft. If they just left with the knowledge in their head, by the time they were done re-developing the system at Uber they should have made several different choices along the way: optimal choices change over time... That "independently developed" system improves the state of things overall, whereas an under-talented copy of a prior design generally doesn't work as well as the original - not everybody from the prior team moves to the new company, designs are copied without knowing why choices were made or even how the black boxes work, etc.
It's good that 936 is being invalidated, but I think it is also good that it was useable in the Uber case. I guess what I'm getting around to is: fuzzy copyright, for a limited term (say 15-20 years) would be a great replacement for both copyright and patent in the world of software and hardware design, after all hardware these days is specified almost like a computer program.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by arslan on Thursday October 04 2018, @05:29AM (1 child)
Yes, Uber probably felt guilty - probably at the behest of their highly paid lawyers sowing FUD because its a lowly engineers word so they can't be trusted. Enough to not bother throwing some cheap engineering resource, relative to the lawyers, at doing a quick pass at the patents... fucking lawyers.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 04 2018, @02:43PM
In the cases of tech exfiltration that I have had contact with, the perps were amazingly sloppy about leaving a clear evidence trail back to the stolen code - like, usually a massive import of code which still contains copyright and other text, then a source control repository showing how they modified from that point.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday October 03 2018, @08:29PM
In the early days that was often held up as an abuse of software patents.
I was taught to use XOR cursors in the Spring of 1984. When was it patented?
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]