Waymo Asks Court to Block Uber’s Self-Driving Car Project -<br />By DAISUKE WAKABAYASHIMARCH 10, 2017<br />SAN FRANCISCO — Waymo, the self-driving car business spun out of Google’s parent company last year, asked a federal court<br />on Friday to block Uber’s work on a competing self-driving vehicle that Waymo claimed could be using stolen technology.<br />In another partially redacted declaration filed with the court, Pierre-Yves Droz, a hardware engineer at Waymo, said Mr. Levandowski, while still with Google, told him<br />that he wanted long-range lidar for his start-up and that he wanted to “replicate” Waymo’s technology.<br />Waymo also filed testimony from employees and a Google security engineer describing how Anthony Levandowski, a former Google executive, discussed Uber’s interest in the technology<br />and systematically stole proprietary company documents.<br />Mr. Droz said this did not surprise him because Mr. Levandowski had told him earlier<br />that he wanted to start a self-driving car company and that Uber would be interested in “buying the team” responsible for the lidar being developed at Google.<br />Waymo sued Uber last month, accusing the ride-hailing company of colluding with Mr. Levandowski to<br />steal crucial parts of Waymo’s technology to accelerate its development of autonomous vehicles.
