New Evidence Delays Waymo-Uber Trial

New evidence has prompted a U.S. federal judge in San Francisco to delay next week’s planned start of a trial over claims that ride hailing service Uber Technologies Inc. used trade secrets stolen from autonomous-car developer Waymo.

Uber has insisted it never possessed the contested documents, which Waymo says were stolen by ex-employee Anthony Levandowski, who was later hired by Uber.

But now a 37-page letter has surfaced that details a secretive group within Uber, created to gather competitive intelligence and conceal its efforts from regulators, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The letter was written by the attorney representing Ric Jacobs, a former member of Uber’s security team, and submitted to Uber management earlier this year. The letter describes a secretive culture created within Uber that featured disappearing messages, offline storage devices for stolen trade secrets and training to help employees communicate in ways that would evade legal discovery.

Jacobs left Uber in April and later reached a settlement with the company concerning his claims. In testimony on Tuesday, he affirmed many details described by his attorney in the letter. But the Journal says he also denied some of the assertions made.

In delaying the trial, District Judge William Alsup declares that any company that sets up the surreptitious system Jacobs describes “is as suspicious as can be.” Alsup adds that moving forward would be a “huge injustice” to Waymo “if even half of what’s in that letter is true.”

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