Uber has denied conspiring with Anthony Levandowski to steal Waymo's self-driving tech in its latest court filing. According to Bloomberg and Reuters, Uber refuted Waymo's accusation that it colluded with Levandowski to steal 14,000 files before the engineer left Google's former autonomous car division in 2015. The company vehemently denied that it hired him on the condition that he brings those files with him, or that it even knew about about the theft at all.
Alphabet, Waymo's parent corporation, believes those files include the secrets of its self-driving system, including its LiDAR technology that serves as its autonomous car's eyes to see the road, obstacles and pedestrians. Those files are now the center of its lawsuit against the embattled company, which recently lost its CEO following a succession of scandals.
"Prior to the filing of this lawsuit, no one at Uber knew that Levandowski had downloaded any Google proprietary information for any improper purpose or that he had deliberately taken any Google proprietary information with him when he left Google," the documents said.
Uber stressed that Levandowski didn't steal those files to ensure his employment at the firm. If you'll recall, the engineer founded his own autonomous truck driving startup Otto, which Uber snapped up for $680 million, after leaving Google and only joined the ride-hailing company as head of its self-driving operation after the acquisition. The filing said the engineer stole the files in order to ensure that Google pays him the $120 million bonus it promised him.
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