Uber was either a cheating competitor willing to break the law to win the race to develop self-driving cars, or the victim of an unproven conspiracy theory stitched together by its main rival, Waymo, jurors heard in opening statements of a trade secrets trial on Monday.
The first salvos were delivered to a 10-person jury in San Francisco federal court in a civil lawsuit that could help determine who emerges in the forefront of the autonomous car business nearly a year after Waymo, the self-driving car unit of Google’s parent company Alphabet, sued rival Uber Technologies.
The case hinges on whether ride-hailing company Uber used apparent trade secrets to advance its autonomous vehicle program. Waymo's allegation is that its former engineer Anthony Levandowski downloaded more than 14,000 confidential files in December 2015 containing designs for autonomous vehicles before going to work for Uber and leading its self-driving car unit in 2016.
“Waymo wants you to believe that Anthony Levandowski got together with Uber as part of some grand conspiracy to cheat and take trade secrets,” Uber attorney Bill Carmody said in his opening statement to the jury. “But like most conspiracy stories it just doesn’t make sense when you get the whole story.”
Uber and Waymo are part of a crowded field of automakers and technology companies competing to build fleets of self-driving cars that could transform urban transportation systems.
Waymo attorney Charles Verhoeven told the jury that the competitive pressures were so great to develop the cars that the then-CEO of Uber, Travis Kalanick, decided that "winning was more important than obeying the law".
“We’re bringing this case because Uber is cheating. They took our technology ... to win this race at all costs,” Mr Verhoeven said.
Waymo has estimated damages in the case at about $1.9 billion. Uber rejects the financial damages claim.
Uber attorney Mr Carmody said the “elephant in the courtroom” was that, despite the downloads by Mr Levandowski, Google’s proprietary information never made it to Uber and into its self-driving technology.
“There is no connection whatsoever between any files he downloaded ... and what’s in here,” Mr Carmody said, pointing to an Uber-designed Lidar sensor sitting in front of him, a light-based sensor that is crucial to autonomous driving and central to the case.
“There’s not a single piece of Google proprietary information at Uber,” he added. “Nothing, zero, period.”
After what is expected to be two weeks of testimony, the jury will have to decide whether the eight apparent trade secrets were indeed such, and not common knowledge, and whether Uber improperly acquired them, used them and benefited from them.
Mr Levandowski, regarded as a visionary in autonomous technology, is not a defendant in the case but is on Waymo’s witness list. He was fired from Uber in May 2017 because the company said he refused to co-operate with Uber in the Waymo lawsuit and did not hand over information requested of him in the case.
Waymo sought to put a reassuring face on the company's self-driving efforts, calling as its first witness chief executive John Krafcik, who described for the jury the first car he bought, his two children and how he found Waymo's mission to reduce driving fatalities "inspiring".
Asked why Waymo sued Uber, Mr Krafcik responded: “We believe in fair competition.
“We believe in accelerating the technology that is going to save a lot of lives in this world. What we came to find is aspects of our technology were taken from us in an unfair fashion and it was important for us to correct that.”
Under cross-examination, however, Mr Carmody tried to show that, rather than leading the pack in autonomous driving, behind the scenes Waymo was struggling to keep talent, citing emails between Waymo executives expressing concerns about the exodus of top engineers for rivals.
Mr Carmody showed the jury an email sent by Mr Levandowski to Google co-founder Larry Page in January 2016, a few weeks after downloading the documents. “Chauffeur is broken. We are losing our tech advantage fast,” Mr Levandowski wrote, referring to a previous name of the project.
Uber has co-founder and former CEO Mr Kalanick at the top of its witness list. There are almost 100 potential witnesses between the two companies, according to court documents, including Google co-founders Mr Page and Sergey Brin, Benchmark venture capitalist and Uber investor Bill Gurley and Alphabet executive David Drummond.
Waymo lawyer Mr Verhoeven, ending the day, walked Mr Krafcik through the list of departed engineers who went to form their own companies or join others, asking him whether Waymo had sued them after their departure.
"We did not," the chief executive replied.
COMPANY PROFILE
Founders: Alhaan Ahmed, Alyina Ahmed and Maximo Tettamanzi
Total funding: Self funded
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Results
Final: Iran beat Spain 6-3.
Play-off 3rd: UAE beat Russia 2-1 (in extra time).
Play-off 5th: Japan beat Egypt 7-2.
Play-off 7th: Italy beat Mexico 3-2.
UFC%20FIGHT%20NIGHT%3A%20SAUDI%20ARABIA%20RESULTS
%3Cp%3E%0D%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EMain%20card%3Cbr%3EMiddleweight%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%0D%3Cbr%3ERobert%20Whittaker%20defeated%20Ikram%20Aliskerov%20via%20knockout%20(Round%201)%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EHeavyweight%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%0D%3Cbr%3EAlexander%20Volkov%20def%20Sergei%20Pavlovich%20via%20unanimous%20decision%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EMiddleweight%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%0D%3Cbr%3EKelvin%20Gastelum%20def%20Daniel%20Rodriguez%20via%20unanimous%20decision%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EMiddleweight%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%0D%3Cbr%3EShara%20Magomedov%20def%20Antonio%20Trocoli%20via%20knockout%20(Round%203)%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ELight%20heavyweight%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%0D%3Cbr%3EVolkan%20Oezdemir%20def%20Johnny%20Walker%20via%20knockout%20(Round%201)%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EPreliminary%20Card%0D%3Cbr%3ELightweight%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%0D%3Cbr%3ENasrat%20Haqparast%20def%20Jared%20Gordon%20via%20split%20decision%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFeatherweight%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%0D%3Cbr%3EFelipe%20Lima%20def%20Muhammad%20Naimov%20via%20submission%20(Round%203)%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EWelterweight%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%0D%3Cbr%3ERinat%20Fakhretdinov%20defeats%20Nicolas%20Dalby%20via%20split%20decision%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBantamweight%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%0D%3Cbr%3EMuin%20Gafurov%20def%20Kang%20Kyung-ho%20via%20unanimous%20decision%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ELight%20heavyweight%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%0D%3Cbr%3EMagomed%20Gadzhiyasulov%20def%20Brendson%20Ribeiro%20via%20majority%20decision%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBantamweight%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%0D%3Cbr%3EChang%20Ho%20Lee%20def%20Xiao%20Long%20via%20split%20decision%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Your rights as an employee
The government has taken an increasingly tough line against companies that fail to pay employees on time. Three years ago, the Cabinet passed a decree allowing the government to halt the granting of work permits to companies with wage backlogs.
The new measures passed by the Cabinet in 2016 were an update to the Wage Protection System, which is in place to track whether a company pays its employees on time or not.
If wages are 10 days late, the new measures kick in and the company is alerted it is in breach of labour rules. If wages remain unpaid for a total of 16 days, the authorities can cancel work permits, effectively shutting off operations. Fines of up to Dh5,000 per unpaid employee follow after 60 days.
Despite those measures, late payments remain an issue, particularly in the construction sector. Smaller contractors, such as electrical, plumbing and fit-out businesses, often blame the bigger companies that hire them for wages being late.
The authorities have urged employees to report their companies at the labour ministry or Tawafuq service centres — there are 15 in Abu Dhabi.
How to watch Ireland v Pakistan in UAE
When: The one-off Test starts on Friday, May 11
What time: Each day’s play is scheduled to start at 2pm UAE time.
TV: The match will be broadcast on OSN Sports Cricket HD. Subscribers to the channel can also stream the action live on OSN Play.
Sarfira
Director: Sudha Kongara Prasad
Starring: Akshay Kumar, Radhika Madan, Paresh Rawal
Rating: 2/5
The bio
Date of Birth: April 25, 1993
Place of Birth: Dubai, UAE
Marital Status: Single
School: Al Sufouh in Jumeirah, Dubai
University: Emirates Airline National Cadet Programme and Hamdan University
Job Title: Pilot, First Officer
Number of hours flying in a Boeing 777: 1,200
Number of flights: Approximately 300
Hobbies: Exercising
Nicest destination: Milan, New Zealand, Seattle for shopping
Least nice destination: Kabul, but someone has to do it. It’s not scary but at least you can tick the box that you’ve been
Favourite place to visit: Dubai, there’s no place like home
Buy farm-fresh food
The UAE is stepping up its game when it comes to platforms for local farms to show off and sell their produce.
In Dubai, visit Emirati Farmers Souq at The Pointe every Saturday from 8am to 2pm, which has produce from Al Ammar Farm, Omar Al Katri Farm, Hikarivege Vegetables, Rashed Farms and Al Khaleej Honey Trading, among others.
In Sharjah, the Aljada residential community will launch a new outdoor farmers’ market every Friday starting this weekend. Manbat will be held from 3pm to 8pm, and will host 30 farmers, local home-grown entrepreneurs and food stalls from the teams behind Badia Farms; Emirates Hydroponics Farms; Modern Organic Farm; Revolution Real; Astraea Farms; and Al Khaleej Food.
In Abu Dhabi, order farm produce from Food Crowd, an online grocery platform that supplies fresh and organic ingredients directly from farms such as Emirates Bio Farm, TFC, Armela Farms and mother company Al Dahra.
