Uber stated in court filings on Saturday that its self-driving car program never used the technology which Google spinoff Waymo is suing it over. Waymo's lawsuit accuses former Google engineers of downloading confidential files containing information about its custom "LiDAR" technology for self-driving cars and then joining Uber. However, Uber claims that it still uses the commercially available LiDAR systems because its in-house technology is not ready for the road.
Uber also claims that, although one of its engineering leads has been accused of stealing tens of thousands of secret documents from Google, the documents were never uploaded to a computer owned by Uber and thus, never used in the development of its LiDAR systems.
Waymo's "race" against Uber to bring the first self-driving car to the market came to a head in February when Waymo filed a lawsuit against Uber, claiming that the startup had misappropriated its trade secrets and patented information.
According to Waymo's claims, the Google-owned auto company's trade secrets were stolen by Anthony Levandowski, who allegedly downloaded 14,000 confidential documents from the company's systems before launching the self-driving truck company Otto that was quickly acquired by Uber. For this, Waymo has been seeking a preliminary injunction against Uber that, if granted, would have to shut down its self-driving program while the case is underway.
Associate General Counsel of Uber Angela Padilla said in a statement that Waymo's injunction motion is a total misfire because there is no evidence that any of the 14,000 files in question even touched Uber's servers. Also, she said Waymo's assertion that Uber's multi-lens LiDAR is the same as their single-lens LiDAR is clearly false.
Uber admitted that it is way behind on self-driving tech. Google launched its self-driving car project in 2009 and spun it out as Waymo under its parent company Alphabet late last year. However, Uber, in contrast, has only been working on self-driving vehicles since 2015 when it poached talent from Carnegie Mellon to kickstart its effort.