The newly-formed driverless car division of Alphabet — Google’s parent company — is suing Uber and its recently acquired driverless tech company Otto for stealing key technology.
The division, Waymo, filed a lawsuit on February 23rd with the federal court of California. In its lawsuit and accompanying Medium post, Waymo accuses Otto founder Anthony Levandowski, who left Google to launch the driverless technology startup, of stealing 14,000 confidential documents from Google before his departure.
Levandowski now holds an executive role at Uber as per its acquisition of Otto in August of 2016. The Verge reports Waymo’s lawsuit claims that among these stolen documents were schematics of a circuit board and details about radar and LIDAR technology.
Uber acquired Otto this past August according to reports from Bloomberg, which was focusing on developing self-driving kits at the time. Otto was most widely known for making its own LIDAR sensors.
In addition to acquiring the company’s intellectual property, Uber obtained Otto’s team, which included players from Tesla, Apple and Google.
Source: United States District Court, San Francisco Division Via: The Verge
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