Charles K. Verhoeven

Verhoeven is lead counsel for Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo LLC in its highly publicized suit against Uber Technologies Inc. and former engineer Anthony Levandowski over alleged misappropriation of autonomous car trade secrets. The most recent part of the litigation has been over Verhoeven’s claim that Uber and its law firm, Morrison & Foerster LLP, are hiding illegally downloaded documents.

“We have discovered they have documents they haven’t produced,” Verhoeven said. “At our latest hearing Judge [William] Alsup said that while money sanctions will not be a remedy, he is considering a jury instruction that Uber didn’t come clean until he ordered them to.”

Verhoeven said it was only in late July, with an October trial date looming, that he and his colleagues learned that a litigation support company that works for Uber and MoFo had copies of images of Levandowski’s work product that Verhoeven has been trying to get since the case was filed. Waymo LLC v. Uber Technologies Inc., 3:17-cv-009939 (N.D. Cal., filed Feb. 23, 2017).

“They hid this stuff, and it will be positive for Waymo, for the jury to be informed that they were hiding stuff,” Verhoeven said.

Verhoeven was also skeptical of a series of different stories that he said Uber and its lawyers seem to be telling. In May, the ride-hailing company fired Levandowski. “Only after that did they change a lot of things. Now they argue that he took a lot of files from Waymo and Google as part of a strategy to insure he’d get credit for his work, not to use them in favor of Uber. It’s a ridiculous theory, and their new narrative is in grave jeopardy.”

A winning track record representing Google could give Uber concern. Verhoeven, co-chair of his firm’s intellectual property litigation practice group, won a hat trick in defending his client in litigation by SimpleAir Inc., including overturning an $85 million verdict lost by former counsel, then winning a defense verdict at a second trial and arguing successfully for dismissal of a third SimpleAir suit on preclusion grounds. “I was pleased,” Verhoeven said.

— John Roemer