In a victory for Alphabet, a judge decided to push back the trial for its lawsuit against Uber from next week to Dec. 4. The move suggests that Alphabet could widen its claims against Uber.
Alphabet successfully pushed back the trial date for its Uber lawsuit until Dec. 4
A judge decided that Alphabet can pursue new evidence it found in a document that was made public on Monday.
Alphabet is suing Uber for allegedly misappropriating trade secrets, and asked a judge for more time after it got ahold of a key document. The company claimed it produced a “mountain” of new evidence that merited a delay.
“New evidence continues to come to light through thousands of documents and hundreds of previously unexamined devices that Defendants are only now turning over,” an Alphabet spokesperson said in a statement. “We are reviewing these materials and look forward to presenting our case at trial.”
While the presiding judge, William Alsup, granted Alphabet more time to look into this new evidence he questioned whether the company would find anything.
“It’s hard to believe you’re going to find anything in there that shoes Uber was using trade secrets,” Alsup said at a hearing on Tuesday.
Uber echoed Alsup’s sentiment and said the company is prepared to go to trial.
“The court has made clear that Waymo’s case is not what they hoped, and that more time will not change the hard fact that their trade secrets never came to Uber,” an Uber spokesperson said in a statement. “We’re read to go to trial now, and will be ready after this very brief continuance.”
The document outlines operational details of a startup founded by Anthony Levandowski, who was a lead engineer in Alphabet’s self-driving-car division. Uber commissioned the report in March 2016 specifically to discover if Levandowski had any confidential information from his former employer, Alphabet.
Uber acquired Levandowski’s startup called Otto in August 2016. Levandowski, who has invoked his Fifth Amendment rights, is not named as a party to the case.
In its initial motion for a trial delay, Alphabet said that the document that became public on Monday could lead the company to add more claims of trade secret theft to its case.
Uber contends, for its part, that the document proves that none of the files ever made it to its company servers.
Jury selection for the trial will begin Nov. 29, and the trial may continue until January if necessary.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
By Theodore Schleifer
By Johana Bhuiyan
