Waymo, Uber trade secrets case dismissed after settlement
Alphabet's (GOOGL) Waymo self-driving vehicle unit and the ride-hailing company Uber have reached a deal to end a legal dispute over allegedly stolen trade secrets.
Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, confirmed the settlement in a statement in which he expressed regret over Uber's actions, saying the situation "should have been handled differently."
"To be clear, while we do not believe that any trade secrets made their way from Waymo to Uber, nor do we believe that Uber has used any of Waymo's proprietary information in its self-driving technology, we are taking steps with Waymo to ensure our Lidar and software represents just our good work," he said.
The trial to decide the case, which began in San Francisco earlier this week, came to an abrupt end Friday morning when it was dismissed by a judge, CNET reported.
While Uber did not reveal details of the settlement, The Wall Street Journal and BuzzFeed report that Waymo would get .34 percent of Uber's equity under the terms. At Uber's present valuation, that amounts to about $245 million.
The legal dispute erupted after Google, which has been developing self-driving vehicles since 2009, accused Uber of stealing trade secrets to advance its own driverless cars unit. It brought in high-profile figures, including former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, with Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin both scheduled to testify. The trial was expected to last about three weeks.
Wayno had claimed a former star engineer at Uber had swiped 14,000 "highly confidential" files to come up with its own technology, a contention Uber had dismissed as "baseless."