The Alphabet-Uber trial over the alleged theft of self-driving car trade secrets has begun

The engineer at the heart of a years-long dispute between two of Silicon Valley’s most powerful companies, Uber and Google, is facing federal charges that could send him to prison in the latest twist in a seemingly never-ending legal saga.

In a new indictment unsealed on Tuesday, federal prosecutors allege that Anthony Levandowski, the star self-driving executive who decamped from Google’s Waymo subsidiary and eventually joined Uber in 2016, allegedly stole Google’s intellectual property when he headed out the door. Levandowski is being charged with 33 counts of theft or attempted theft.

Alphabet’s lawsuit against Uber was bad for Uber. That’s an understatement. In the midst of an already scandal-ridden year, the messy, public lawsuit exposed the company’s internal messages, questionable competitive practices and resulted in the termination of at least one top executive.

More than that, it put Uber’s self-driving efforts at risk. If Alphabet could convince a jury that Uber worked with Anthony Levandowski, a former top engineer at both companies, to steal trade secrets, Uber could have been forced to stop using any and all technology that incorporated Alphabet’s alleged trade secrets and pay out millions, if not billions, in damages.

Uber has reached a settlement agreement with Alphabet over its lawsuit against the ride-hailing company claiming theft of trade secrets.

Alphabet sued Uber for allegedly conspiring with a former Alphabet employee to bring self-driving trade secrets over to Uber in a bid to accelerate Uber’s autonomous technology.

Benchmark partner Bill Gurley’s time on the stand was short. The former Uber board member was called as a witness on the fourth day of trial for Alphabet’s lawsuit against Uber.

But in that brief time on the stand, Gurley — who presiding Judge William Alsup said could take the cake for the tallest witness in his court room — managed to contradict a small part of former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick’s testimony.

The timeline of events leading up to Uber’s acquisition of self-driving trucking startup Otto has always been a bit muddled.

But Alphabet’s lawsuit against Uber, which centers on that acquisition, has yielded more information about that deal.

If former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick’s strategy was to be restrained and compliant on the first day of his testimony in Alphabet’s lawsuit against Uber, then the strategy on the second day was to play the chump.

Kalanick, who took the witness stand for the second time on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, has fielded much of the attention from Alphabet’s legal team. Alphabet is eager to convince the jury that the overly ambitious, often-competitive Kalanick worked with a former engineer, Anthony Levandowski, to bring over trade secrets from the company’s self-driving arm, Waymo.

The legal saga between tech behemoths Alphabet and Uber began with a bruising condemnation of Uber’s former CEO.

“This case is about one competitor deciding they need to win at all costs,” an attorney for Alphabet said in his opening statement on Monday.

Uber and Waymo are finally having their day in court. Alphabet’s self-driving arm, Waymo, and Uber gave their opening statements in front of a jury on Monday, commencing the courtroom phase of what has already been a messy legal battle.

The day was entirely about opening arguments, but both Uber’s and Waymo’s strategy centers largely on one thing: Our opponent stooped to the levels they did because they were afraid we would beat them.

A 37-page letter that details allegations of unethical competitive surveillance practices at Uber has just been made public as part of Alphabet’s ongoing trade secret litigation against Uber.

The letter, written by the attorney of a former Uber security employee Richard Jacobs, was sent to the company’s general counsel Angela Padilla after he left the company.

Uber’s deputy general counsel Angela Padilla took the stand on Wednesday to respond to a damning 37-page letter that outlined a litany of questionable security practices alleged by a former employee.

In her testimony, Padilla said the employee, Richard Jacobs, was trying to extort money from the company and there was no merit to his claims. Padilla and Jacobs were ordered by a judge presiding over Alphabet’s lawsuit against Uber to testify in court after the judge was notified about the letter.

Just days after admitting that it suppressed information about a data hack in 2016 — inviting new federal and statewide questions — Uber’s security practices have come under fire yet again. This time, it’s at the hands of a former global intelligence employee named Richard Jacobs.

After Jacobs was terminated from Uber, his attorney wrote a 30-page letter detailing allegations about some of the ride-hail company’s information security practices. That letter has now been submitted as evidence in Alphabet’s trade-secret misappropriation lawsuit against Uber.

In a dramatic last-minute turn of events, Uber has been cited for withholding evidence in a lawsuit brought by competitor Alphabet.

Last week, the U.S. attorney of the Northern District of California notified the judge presiding over the case, Judge William Alsup, that there was some evidence that Uber hadn’t disclosed either to the court or to Alphabet’s self-driving arm, Waymo. Alsup referred the case to the U.S. attorney’s office in May 2017.

A judge has ordered Alphabet to whittle down its trade secret claims even further in its landmark lawsuit against Uber. This after granting the company more than a month to pursue additional claims.

In a new order dated Nov. 2, Judge William Alsup said that Alphabet’s self-driving arm Waymo cannot pursue one of the nine trade secrets it had accused Uber of misappropriating. The company had already been ordered to narrow its more than 120 trade secrets down to nine.

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 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.

A key document in Alphabet’s legal battle against Uber reveals that a former Alphabet executive had a trove of data on Alphabet’s self-driving car technology and accessed some of the files after he left the company.

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.

A report that Alphabet wants to use in its lawsuit against Uber was made public today. The document in question details the assets and liabilities of a startup Uber acquired in August 2016 that has become a central part of Alphabet’s claims that Uber stole proprietary information.

Uber commissioned the due diligence report when it was in the process of acquiring Otto, a self-driving trucking startup founded by Anthony Levandowki, a former Alphabet executive who was accused of stealing trade secrets.

Dara Khosrowshahi is less than a month into his job as the new CEO of Uber and he already has a number of difficult decisions to make. First among them is whether to settle the lawsuit Alphabet filed against the ride-hailing company earlier this year.

Alphabet is suing Uber for trade secret misappropriation, alleging that one of its former executives, Anthony Levandowski, downloaded 14,000 files and took them to Uber after it acquired his self-driving startup, Otto. Uber denies this serious allegation of theft, noting that none of the files have made it to the company’s servers and that it is not using Alphabet technology.

Alphabet thinks Uber should pay $2.6 billion for allegedly stealing a single trade secret.

Alphabet is in court with Uber today to convince a judge to delay the Oct. 10 trial in its self-driving lawsuit against the ride-hail company. But during the hearing, an Uber attorney said that Alphabet is seeking $2.6 billion in damages for just one of the nine trade secrets the company is claiming a former Uber executive stole.

Uber is asking a judge to reject Alphabet’s request to delay the first jury trial in its self-driving lawsuit, which is scheduled for October 10.

The ride-hail company claims that Alphabet is simply asking for a “do-over” because its allegations that an executive stole files and brought them to Uber has weakened.

Alphabet has asked a federal judge to delay a trial in its lawsuit against Uber, arguing that new evidence produced by the ride-hailing company requires more time to digest — and possibly more claims of trade-secret theft still to come.

Earlier this month, a federal court in California delivered Alphabet’s self-driving car unit, Waymo, a major victory: It ordered that Uber had to turn over a “due diligence” report that it commissioned at the time it purchased Otto, the self-driving truck company started by Anthony Levandowski after leaving Google.

A federal circuit judge dealt a blow to Uber in Alphabet’s lawsuit against the ride-hailing company. The judge has compelled Uber to turn over a key document related to alleged theft of files from Alphabet’s self-driving division Waymo.

The document is a report Uber commissioned when it was looking at buying self-driving truck startup Otto. The report was prepared by cybersecurity and firm Stroz Friedberg.

A judge has ruled that Uber can’t present a key argument in its defense against an Alphabet lawsuit.

It’s a potential blow to the ride-hail company’s defense. Alphabet’s suit claims former Uber executive Anthony Levandowski downloaded 14,000 files from Alphabet’s autonomous vehicle division in order to give them to Uber. But the ride-hailing giant planned to present a different theory: Levandowski took the files in order to secure his bonus payment from Alphabet.

Alphabet’s lawsuit against Uber has been revealing, to say the least. Now Uber has filed a series of texts between former CEO Travis Kalanick and the company’s former head of self-driving Anthony Levandowski that shed some light on the duo’s dynamic as well as their priorities.

After reading the texts, it’s hard not come away with one big thing: Kalanick and Levandowski were very interested — if not obsessed — with what their potential competitors in the self-driving industry were doing.

Benchmark Capital may have just given another Uber investor some legal ammo by filing a bombshell complaint against the company and its former CEO Travis Kalanick. Central to Benchmark’s allegations that Kalanick committed fraud and breach of fiduciary duty is Alphabet’s self-driving lawsuit against Uber.

According to the complaint, Kalanick did not disclose to the board what he knew about Alphabet’s allegations of trade secret misappropriation before the board signed off on Uber’s acquisition of self-driving startup Otto.

So, what exactly does Benchmark hope to achieve by suing Uber’s former CEO?

Here’s the recourse they’re seeking in the lawsuit filed today: