The long-awaited trial between Uber and Waymo began on Monday in San Francisco.
Uber has been sued by Waymo, the self-driving company. Waymo has accused the ride-hailing app of stealing and using trade secrets for technology surrounding the new autonomous car.
Waymo, a company spun out of Google, will be making its case first with Uber then having a chance to defend itself.
The trial centres around Anthony Levandowski who worked for Google until January 2016 and was considered one of the leading minds in developing technologies for the autonomous vehicles.
When Levandowski left Google, it was understood he took over 14,000 confidential documents with him. These documents held top secrets regarding the Lidar technology, which is technology concerning light detection and radar.
Before leaving Google, Levandowski emailed Alphabet’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) chief executive, calling the self-driving-car project was “broken.”
He asked for permission to create an alternative team to compete against their co-workers, because the company was moving too slowly.
“He went from someone I called a friend to someone I considered an enemy,” said Krafcik.
Levandowski then founded his own autonomous trucking company, which was later acquired by Uber. Uber does not deny these events and that Levandowski is now at the helm of their autonomous car development, however, they maintain they gained nothing from the stolen documents.
The trial is expected to last three weeks where Waymo originally argued that Uber stole 121 secrets and patents Uber from them. This number has not been reduced to eight.
The witness list for the trial includes technology billionaires including Travis Kalanick, Uber’s former chief executive, and Larry Page, chief executive of Alphabet.
“That was quite a story, but I’m going to tell you right upfront: It didn’t happen. Period. End of story,” said Carmody, who is a partner at the law firm Susman Godfrey. “Like most conspiracy theories, it doesn’t make sense when you hear the whole story.”