Uber to pay $245 million to Google for stolen self-drive tech

Google's parent company, Alphabet, had filed a lawsuit last year accusing Uber of stealing its self-driving car technology. According to a media report, Uber and Google have now reached an out of court settlement over the lawsuit filed. Google will get a stake in Uber worth roughly US$ 245 million.

Uber is denying the allegations by Google but has agreed to settle the case to avoid future losses due to the case. The exact terms of the settlement have not yet been revealed to the public. The United States Department of Justice has revealed that even if the civil case has been settled, they will be initiating a criminal probing of the company. A letter from former security guard at Uber was revealed at the trial. According to the letter, Uber has a secret department that steals technology from other companies.

The lawsuit filed by Google's parent company Alphabet alleges that Uber worked with a former engineer Anthony Levandowski to steal documents from the self-driving unit, Waymo. The engineer left Waymo in 2016 and founded his own self-driving company Otto. Uber later purchased this company for a reported price of US$ 700 million. Further, Waymo said that over 14,000 documents were stolen, most of them related to autonomous tech.

Source - Commercial Carrier Journal