Uber Fights to Keep Google Self-Driving Car Lawsuit From Going to Trial
Attorneys for Uber worked Thursday morning to convince a federal judge that a case brought by rival Waymo over the alleged theft of trade secrets from the company should be dealt with in arbitration and not in a public trial, the latest twist in the high-stakes legal battle over the future of autonomous cars. Uber argued inside a federal courtroom in San Francisco today that Waymo’s claims relate to Uber engineer Anthony Levandowski, who it says committed the theft while still a Google employee (Google parent Alphabet Inc. owns Waymo), making the issue a violation of his contract and therefore a matter to be resolved through private arbitration. Waymo, created last year to commercialize Google’s robotic car software and hardware, insisted that’s not the basis of its suit. …
