Alphabet Self-driving Car Unit Seeks Injunction Against Uber

(RTTNews) - Alphabet's self-driving project Waymo is seeking an injunction to block Uber from using self-driving operations.

The motion for the injunction comes a few weeks after Waymo filed a lawsuit against Uber and the head of its self-driving division Anthony Levandowski accusing of theft of a key technology system.

Levandowski had joined Uber when the ride-hailing service acquired his startup, Otto, last year.

Waymo alleges that Levandowski stole the company's proprietary design for its laser-based radar system. According to Waymo, before Levandowski left Google he downloaded 14,000 "highly confidential" files to an external hard drive, including the design for the company's lidar circuit board.

According to Verge, Gary Brown, a forensic security engineer with Google, said that Levandowski downloaded those files using his personal laptop, which made it easy to track.

"When an employee's device interacts with a Google service or is active on a Google network, those interactions and activities can be recorded in logs that identify the device (by its unique identifiers) and/or the interaction or activity (for example, downloading files from a secure repository)," Brown said.