For those of you blocked by the WSJ's paywall, this is no longer speculation, it's coming from Uber's own attorneys that Kalanick knew Levandowski had the files and told him not to bring them to Uber.
I can't see this as a good development for Uber. Their lawyers say it disproves the theory that Kalanick wanted Levandowski to steal the files, and maybe that's true, but now Uber has to explain why they knew Levandowski stole IP from Waymo and then covered it up and hired him anyway.
There's one interesting point. Until they said they didn't know that Lewandowski had Waymo's material they could basically claim plausible deniability (don't know how that work in a civil lawsuit). But now they admitted they knew Lewandowski had that data. To me, that's kind of an admission that Otto's tech was tainted. Yes, probably Google still needs to demonstrate it has been used by Uber, but it is a huge move forward...
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For those of you blocked by the WSJ's paywall, this is no longer speculation, it's coming from Uber's own attorneys that Kalanick knew Levandowski had the files and told him not to bring them to Uber.
I can't see this as a good development for Uber. Their lawyers say it disproves the theory that Kalanick wanted Levandowski to steal the files, and maybe that's true, but now Uber has to explain why they knew Levandowski stole IP from Waymo and then covered it up and hired him anyway.
Still plenty of popcorn left in this saga.
There's one interesting point. Until they said they didn't know that Lewandowski had Waymo's material they could basically claim plausible deniability (don't know how that work in a civil lawsuit). But now they admitted they knew Lewandowski had that data. To me, that's kind of an admission that Otto's tech was tainted. Yes, probably Google still needs to demonstrate it has been used by Uber, but it is a huge move forward...