New Evidence Could Blow Open the Uber/Waymo Self-Driving Lawsuit

Today, after three weeks of legal hemming and hawing, the Northern District of California finally made public a potentially key piece of evidence in the rollicking, roiling, rolling trade secrets lawsuit between self-driving Alphabet spinoff Waymo and ridehailing company Uber. That evidence is the Jacobs Letter, a 37-page rundown of truly outrageous allegations about Uber's business practices, put to paper by the lawyer for former Uber employee Ric Jacobs. Originally sent to Uber's lawyers as part of a dispute between the company and Jacobs, it's now at the center of Uber's legal fight with Waymo. And while the letter's contents most definitely have not been proven true, they include some tremendous new assertions: that former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick himself directed trade theft; that the company employed spies to trail competitors' executives; that it illegally recorded a call with employees about sexual assault allegations; and that it used a meme-filled slideshow to teach employees how to hide implicating documents from nosy lawyers. So we--like you, presumably--have a few questions.