Alphabet subsidiary cancels number of patents in lawsuit against Uber

Waymo, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet, has dropped three out of four patent cases against Uber. Waymo no longer claims patent infringement on three patents, but still claims that Uber stole technology.

Engadget reports this, based on court documents that have been put online by Court Listener. The documents show that Waymo, maker of autonomous driving cars, in its lawsuit against Uber no longer claims that three patents are infringed; only one patent remains in the suit. The case revolves around infringement of lidar technology to which Waymo has a patent.

Uber has already responded to the dropping of the three patent cases. The company argues that Waymo’s actions show that there is no evidence of patent infringement by Uber. Furthermore, the taxi company accuses Waymo of spreading ‘conspiracy theories’. However, Waymo says it has withdrawn a number of patents from the lawsuit because Uber has promised to no longer use the techniques in question.

The lawsuit stems from Uber’s hiring of Anthony Levandowski after he left Waymo shortly before. Waymo claims that Levandowski stole 14,000 documents containing company information and took them to Uber. Subsequently, technology would have been used by Uber to make self-driving cars.

Earlier, the judge ruled that Levandowski may no longer work on Uber projects developing lidar technology for self-driving cars. Despite this, the judge also found that Waymo had not yet been able to demonstrate a patent infringement sufficiently.