Waymo, Uber Reach $244.8M Settlement on Driverless Car Trade Secrets
Less than a week into their blockbuster trade secret showdown, Waymo and Uber have settled their dispute over driverless car technology.
February 09, 2018 at 11:22 AM
4 minute read
SAN FRANCISCO — Less than a week into their blockbuster trade secret showdown, Waymo and Uber have settled their dispute over driverless car technology.
The parties announced they reached an agreement Friday morning as jaws dropped in a half-full courtroom, on what was set to be a technology-heavy fifth day of trial before U.S. District Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California.
According to a statement from Waymo, the settlement includes a payment from Uber that includes 0.34 percent of Uber equity—or about $244.8 million in stock based on a $72 billion valuation. Reuters previously reported that Waymo demanded $1 billion in settlement talks last year and had asked Uber for an apology. On Friday, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi expressed “regrets” in a prepared statement, but stopped short of a full-blown apology.
“This case is ancient history,” Alsup told the court with a smile after the settlement was announced.
Alsup then thanked the jury, telling them they were free to “go write a book” about their experience, minus the trade secrets. The judge also asked those gathered to clap for Farella Braun + Martel's John Cooper, the special master in the case who helped referee the parties' discovery disputes, and the already bustling room filled with applause.
Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan's Charles Verhoeven, who announced the parties had reached a settlement and moved to dismiss the case with prejudice, thanked Alsup for his devotion to the case.
“[There is] nothing more for me to do in this case, it's done, I think,” Alsup said. “Both sides, I ask you to try to get all your material out of the courtroom so I can move on to the next case.”
Then, as soon as Friday's session had started, it was over. Uber general counsel Tony West was all smiles, but said he couldn't comment on the case or settlement. Boies Schiller Flexner partner Karen Dunn, who represented Uber, was also smiling, saying she'll head back home Saturday.
Arturo González of Morrison & Foerster was one of the last to leave the courtroom, and, also donning a smile, said some members of the jury complimented him upon the case's end. But he too couldn't comment on specifics.
The underlying dispute centered on Uber's acquisition of Ottomotto, an autonomous car company founded by former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski. At trial, Waymo's lawyers from Quinn Emanuel presented evidence that Levandowski had downloaded a trove of 14,000-plus files from Google before he left to form the startup and that he had copied the files to his personal laptop.
In Friday morning's prepared statement, Khosrowshahi said that the acquisition of Otto “made good business sense” at the time, but the “prospect” that Waymo employees might have inappropriately recruited others to join Otto or left with Google files “in retrospect, raised some hard questions.”
“To be clear, while we do not believe that any trade secrets made their way from Waymo to Uber, nor do we believe that Uber has used any of Waymo's proprietary information in its self-driving technology, we are taking steps with Waymo to ensure our Lidar and software represents just our good work,” Khosrowshahi said.
Alsup previously referred the case to the local U.S. Attorney's Office in May for “investigation of possible theft of trade secrets based on the evidentiary record supplied thus far.” Uber later that month fired Levandowski after he refused to testify in the case and asserted his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself.
Levandowski's attorneys, Miles Ehrlich and Ismail Ramsey of Ramsey & Ehrlich, didn't immediately respond to messages Friday morning.
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