Google Spin-Off Sues Uber, Saying Leader Of Autonomous Vehicle Unit Stole Key Designs

Anthony Levandowski, Otto co-founder the head of Uber's self-driving-vehicle project, is accused of taking proprietary designs and information with him when he left Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet. Anthony Levandowski, Otto co-founder the head of Uber's self-driving-vehicle project, is accused of taking proprietary designs and information with him when he left Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet. Waymo, the company that began as Google's self-driving-car project, is suing Uber, saying that when the company bought a start-up founded by Waymo veterans, it also bought thousands of design files that had been inappropriately downloaded from its servers. The start-up in question is Otto, which was only months old when Uber bought it for roughly $680 million last summer. The deal resulted in Uber putting Otto co-founder Anthony Levandowski in charge of its self-driving-vehicle effort -- which includes both trucking, a field Otto had focused on, and personal vehicles. The problem, according to Waymo and Alphabet (Google's umbrella company) is that before he left, Levandowski "took extraordinary efforts to raid Waymo's design server and then conceal his activities."