Uber Exec: 'We Did Not Steal Any Google IP'

On Monday, Anthony Levandowski, co-founder of self-driving-truck startup Otto and now head of Uber's autonomous vehicle program, was interviewed on stage at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Surprisingly, the interviewer didn't mention the controversy that's rocking the autonomous vehicle world: the accusation by Google that Otto, which Uber acquired last year, was built, in part, on patented trade secrets stolen by Levandowski. Before starting Otto, Levandowski was a senior engineer in Google's self-driving vehicle team. In October, I interviewed Levandowski for a Forbes cover story about Uber. Part of the interview focused on how self-driving technology has morphed from a seemingly crazy idea spun up by Google into something scores of car companies, and even startups like Otto, are capable of implementing.