Waymo’s lawsuit against Uber just got more complicated. A federal judge asked the Department of Justice on Thursday to review the accusations of theft of trade secrets brought up in the lawsuit, CNET reports. Waymo claims Uber stole confidential self-driving car technology. U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup said he took no position on whether the case was criminal in nature. The judge also denied Uber’s motion for private arbitration, setting the scene for details to come out in a public trial, which is expected to begin in October.
Waymo previously submitted evidence of patent infringement and asked the court to halt Uber's development of self-driving technology. The lawsuit alleges former Google employee Anthony Levandowski took upward of 14,000 confidential files before he left in January 2016 to start self-driving truck startup Otto. Uber bought the company in August 2016.
Levandowski was part of the team developing Waymo’s lidar technology. Waymo claims this allegedly stolen information benefited Uber’s creation of its own self-driving car technology.
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