Larry Page, Travis Kalanick And Robot Car Stars Ordered To Testify In Uber-Waymo Case
LarryPage Alphabet CEO
A months-long legal fight between Alphabet’s Waymo and Uber over the theft of Google trade secrets is moving to its next phase. The federal judge in the case imposed a strict deadline for depositions from Alphabet CEO Larry Page, ex-Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and many of the biggest names in self-driving car technology.
Judge William Alsup, in an order issued late Friday, chastised Uber and Waymo attorneys for failing to provide dates for testimony from 19 executives and engineers with some connection to the case, so he set the schedule himself.
“To keep this case on track for the agreed-upon trial date, an earlier order requested that counsel meet with the special master and agree upon a series of dates for all remaining depositions that need to be taken. Counsel failed to do so,” a notably irritated Alsup wrote. “As a result, to keep this case on track, the court now resorts to setting a schedule and ORDERS that the … depositions go forward … all commencing at 8:00 a.m. and lasting up to seven hours.”
They begin July 10 with Waymo engineer Pierre-Yves Droz, and Alphabet’s Page must meet with the court on July 17. Kalanick, who resigned this week from Uber, is to appear July 27, while Waymo CEO John Krafcik is due on August 2. The final person on Alsup’s list is Anthony Levandowski, who’s scheduled for an August 10 deposition. He’s the engineer at the center of this high-stakes fight.
The case filed by Waymo in February alleges that Levandowski, a founding member of Google’s self-driving car project, downloaded 14,000 technical files from an internal Google server and transferred them to a personal data drive. He did this weeks before he resigned from Google to start his own driverless tech company, OttoMotto, in early 2016, which was purchased by Uber in August last year for an estimated $680 million.
Waymo claims Levandowski took data related to its LiDAR sensors, a laser-based vision system for self-driving cars. This week, another filing in the case revealed that Levandowski told Kalanick and Uber executives in March 2016, prior to the Otto acquisition, that he had five discs of Google data. Kalanick told him not to bring the material to Uber, and Levandowski later said he destroyed them.
Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, left, and Anthony Levandowski, the engineer at the Uber-Autonomous-Cars
Uber fired Levandowski in May for failing to comply with a court order to return any Google materials in his possession. He has invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in the case, so it’s unclear how much he’ll have to say. Alsup has referred the case to the Justice Department for review to determine if Levandowski’s actions violated federal law.
The judge also wants to hear from autonomous vehicle tech heavyweights, many who worked with Levandowski at Google. These include Chris Urmson and Sebastian Thrun, the first two leaders of Google’s self-driving car project, before it was spun off as Waymo in 2016, and Bryan Salesky, who left Google last year to head up a self-driving vehicle tech company owned by Ford.
Eric Meyhofer, who succeeded Levandowski as head of Uber’s driverless vehicle research group, is to report to the court on July 19.
Culled from forbe.com
