Both sides point fingers as Waymo trial begins

SAN FRANCISCO — Both legal teams at the Waymo-Uber trade secret trial began their opening statements by identifying a company in the autonomous car industry that was desperate due to being in over its head in a market suddenly rife with competition. They disagreed about which company they were describing.

“This case is about two competitors where one competitor decided they needed to win at all cost,” said Charles K. Verhoeven, a partner with Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP who represents driverless car company and Alphabet Inc. subsidiary Waymo LLC.

The autonomous driving company was originally a division of Google X, the research and development arm of the massive tech company, dedicated to inventing ambitious futuristic technologies. Waymo LLC v. Uber Technologies Inc. et al, 17-CV00939 (N.D. Cal., filed Feb. 23, 2017).

Verhoeven said Uber Technologies Inc. was late to the game in the autonomous driving industry and desperate to catch up with its competitors.

He told the jury that Uber suddenly realized a few years ago that Waymo was preparing to enter the ridesharing space to compete with companies like Uber and Lyft Inc. Verhoeven said Uber was terrified of the prospect of being replaced by a company that didn’t have to pay drivers.

The trial attorney said Uber hired a team of engineers from Carnegie Mellon University to jump start their team but couldn’t gain ground on Google despite pouring resources into the project.

“They couldn’t catch up by playing fair,” he said. “It wasn’t working because Google was way too far ahead.”

Verhoeven contended that the increased pressure on its business model led Uber to steal trade secrets from Waymo by hiring the former head engineer of the company.

Bill Carmody, a partner at Susman Godfrey LLP who represents Uber, painted a different picture.

He told the jury that Waymo was spiraling when its star engineer, Anthony Levandowski, left to join Uber. Carmody said Waymo was hemorrhaging talent as a variety of technology giants circled the driverless car company poaching employees, while other engineers left to form their own startups.

Carmody showed the jury internal emails between various leaders at Waymo voicing their frustrations at having lost employees to competitors and lamenting the large sums of money Uber was throwing at its own driverless car project.

The defense attorney said Waymo was losing its talent too quickly and knew it couldn’t recover. He said the company filed this lawsuit to try to get some sort of return on its investment with a tall tale about a conspiracy between Uber and Levandowski.

“Like most conspiracy theories, it doesn’t add up,” Carmody said.

But Verhoeven had emails of his own, purporting to show that Uber’s former CEO, Travis Kalanick, instructed his team to find shortcuts to help the company catch up with Waymo’s technology, asking them to find him “cheat codes.”

“I didn’t know what cheat codes are because I’m too old,” Verhoeven said with a wry smile. “Cheat codes are something in video games that help you get to the next level.”

Verhoeven said using a cheat code was similar to how infamous runner Rosie Ruiz won a marathon in 1980. It was later discovered that Ruiz was riding on the subway rather than running the entire distance.

Carmody retorted that the trove of files Levandowski took with him when he left Waymo didn’t include anything useful and that the plaintiff was never able to prove that the files made their way to Uber.

The defense attorney showed the jury another email, this one authored by a Waymo engineer explaining that he didn’t find many of the files to be particularly valuable and that he even considered housing them on external servers because he didn’t find it necessary to protect them.

Carmody argued that allowing talented people to move from one company to another is the American way, comparing Levandowski’s move to NBA Finals most valuable player Kevin Durant joining the Warriors to win his first championship, a reference he surely hoped would resonate with a Bay Area jury.

“Engineers are free to go from one job to another. They don’t get lobotomies,” he said. “They bring all of their engineering talent, their education. They can work on the same technology in their new company.”

Carmody said Waymo took it personally when Levandowski left and attempted to exact revenge in whatever way it could. “After this lawsuit was filed, what happened?” he asked the jury. “Waymo teams up with Uber’s arch-competitor, Lyft. Alphabet invests a billion dollars in them.”