Judge orders Uber not to use technology taken from Waymo

Uber's self driving car plans have been thrown into chaos after a federal judge ordered Uber to stop using technology that a key executive downloaded before he left Waymo, the Alphabet Inc. autonomous car arm that was spun off from Google. The order filed Monday in a trade secrets theft lawsuit also forces Uber to return all downloaded materials. Judge William Alsup in San Francisco says in the ruling that Waymo has shown compelling evidence that a former star engineer named Anthony Levandowski downloaded confidential files before leaving Waymo. High-profile: Levandowski, a'swaggering' six-foot-seven tech leader, is one of Silicon Valley's most significant figures in the development of self-driving cars In lidar -- or light detection and ranging -- scanning, one or more lasers sends out short pulses, which bounce back when they hit an obstacle, whether clouds, leaves or rocks. In self-driving cars, the sensors constantly scan the surrounding areas looking for information and acting as the'eyes' of the car.