The Uber-Waymo Self-Driving Car Lawsuit Gets a New Star, and Takes a Wild Turn

When Waymo, the autonomous car company once known as Google's self-driving car outfit, announced it was suing Uber for trade secret theft in February, the action seemed to center on a single person: Anthony Levandowski. According to Waymo, the former Google engineer downloaded 14,000 secret documents from its system and used the contents to launch his own self-driving truck startup, Otto, in January 2016. By August, Uber had acquired Otto for an alleged $680 million, and Waymo says the ridehailing giant was in on the theft from the start. Well forget Levandowski and say hello to the litigation's newest and most unlikely star: former Uber intelligence employee Richard Jacobs. Last weekend, the US Attorney's Office pulled the very unusual move of forwarding a piece of evidence to Judge William Alsup, who is overseeing the lawsuit in the Northern District Court of California.