“Google sister wants to prevent Uber from using stolen information through court”

Google sister company Waymo has asked a judge to ban Uber from further using data about self-driving cars. Evidence has been presented in the ongoing lawsuit between the companies that Uber allegedly stole the data.

In the lawsuit, initiated by Waymo against Uber at the end of February, evidence was presented Friday that Uber allegedly stole information about autonomous cars from the Alphabet subsidiary. As a result of the presented evidence, Waymo wants to reach a court that Uber is no longer allowed to use the stolen information, Recode writes following the hearing. It is unclear what exactly this would mean for the American transportation company.

Waymo argued that an investigation by a Google security officer shows that current Uber CEO Anthony Levandowski used his laptop to download 14,000 files from a Waymo repository. Levandowski initially worked at Google, but then went to work for the company Otto, which researches self-driving trucks. This company was subsequently acquired by Uber six months later, according to The Verge.

The files involved a total of 9.7GB of data, including 2GB of files about Waymo’s lidar technology. The similarities between Otto and Waymo’s lidar designs came to light when Waymo accidentally received an email from a supplier containing a drawing of a lidar circuit board.