SAN FRANCISCO (CN) – Despite two major victories last week in its trade-secrets war with Uber, attorneys for driverless car company Waymo asked a federal judge on Wednesday to delay a planned October jury trial because it doesn't have enough time to review smoking-gun evidence Uber recently turned over.
Requesting a Dec. 5 trial date, Waymo's attorneys also told the judge their client wants more time to conduct discovery on the "hundreds of thousands" of documents Uber produced late last week, and said they may change the list of nine trade secrets they planned to try for misappropriation based on the discovery.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup urged both parties to "try hard" to keep the current trial date, but said he would consider granting Waymo a short continuance after Uber "stonewalled" producing the evidence. But Alsup questioned whether Waymo was exaggerating its predicament, at one point referring to it as "crocodile tears."
"I have a feeling you're trying to sabotage that," Alsup told Waymo attorney Charles Verhoeven, referring to the October trial date. "Sometimes I think Waymo exaggerates with this ulterior motive to fix parts of the case. I don't know."
The evidence on which the case now hinges is a due-diligence report Uber commissioned last year to decide whether to acquire Otto, a driverless trucking startup founded by former Waymo engineer Anthony Levandowski. The report purportedly relates to Levandowski’s downloading of 14,000 files containing its trade secrets from Waymo's server before resigning in January 2016 to start Otto.
Waymo sued Uber and Otto a year later, accusing Levandowski of taking the files to use at Otto and striking a $680,000 deal to sell the fledgling company to Uber. Waymo says Uber bought Otto to get Waymo's technology after its own driverless vehicle efforts faltered.
Waymo, which was spun off from Google's driverless car project, has been demanding the report since filing the lawsuit, insisting it would prove allegations that Uber knew about the theft early on. But Waymo only received the report last week after Uber, claiming privilege, opposed producing it at the trial court level and the Federal Circuit denied a subsequent appeal by Levandowski to keep it out of Waymo's hands.
In a brief opposing continuance, Uber accused Waymo of attempting to delay the trial to shore up its "shaky" case because the due-diligence report didn't contain the decisive evidence it said it would. In fact, Uber says that far from proving Waymo's allegations, the report exonerates it by confirming that none of Waymo's files made it to Uber – noting that a dozen inspections by Waymo of Uber's servers and driverless devices hadn't turned up evidence Uber had the files.
"That explains why Waymo is in no hurry to try this case, after requesting and getting expedited discovery and an expedited trial date," Uber said in its brief.
But Verhoeven on Wednesday called the evidence in the report "highly critical" to Waymo's claims, revealing that it includes documents containing two of its trade secrets, one of which Otto used.
"Otto was purchased by Uber. So it was used by a company Uber purchased and it assumed all of its intellectual property," Verhoeven told Alsup in pushing for discovery. "What we're getting now is showing directly a trail leading to Uber. Right now we see it leading to Otto. But we need to follow that trail."