A trade secrets spat between rival self-driving car companies WeRide Corp. and AllRide.AI Inc. has ended in settlement, but not before the Northern District of California imposed terminating sanctions against the defendant AllRide for its “staggering” spoliation of evidence when it intentionally purged emails and email accounts, wiped laptops and servers, and corrupted key source code.

The suit began in late 2018, when WeRide brought claims against Jing Wang (its former CEO), Kun Huang (its former Head of Hardware Technology), and AllRide, the competing company started by Wang and Huang. The claims included trade secrets allegations under the Defend Trade Secrets Act and the California Uniform Trade Secrets Act, along with claims for defamation and intentional interference with prospective economic advantage. WeRide accused Wang, who left WeRide to launch AllRide, of soliciting Huang to join him at his new company, and accused both of stealing WeRide’s trade secrets and immediately using them at AllRide. In April 2019 the Court granted WeRide a preliminary injunction that specifically prohibited Wang, Huang, and AllRide from destroying relevant documents, and ordered Huang to make several electronic devices available for inspection by WeRide. But in October 2019, WeRide moved the Court for sanctions, claiming that AllRide had destroyed emails and key source code. Central to WeRide’s motion was the accusation that AllRide had allowed its email system to continue to implement a 90-day automatic deletion policy, resulting in the destruction of thousands of potentially relevant emails. WeRide also accused AllRide of deleting six email accounts and the source code it supposedly developed to compete with WeRide.
Continue Reading Autonomous Vehicle Competitors Resolve Trade Secrets Case Colored by “Staggering” Spoliation

Crowell & Moring invites you to attend the fifth installment of our Trade Secrets Webinar Series – The Revolving Door of Autonomous Vehicle Talent: Managing Employee Access to Trade Secrets & Facilitating Robust Investigation of Safety Issues, taking place on Tuesday, May 12th at 02:00 pm (EDT).

Autonomous Vehicle (“AV”) developers have been aggressively working to safeguard their vital design documents and data, and have increasingly relied on lawsuits to protect their proprietary information and to prevent such information from reaching their competitors as human talent continues to revolve through the AV industry. Given the increasing popularity of self-driving technology, AV developers should remain vigilant in protecting the trade secrets governing their autonomous vehicle programs and should be sure to implement sound policies for retrieving data upon employee departure.

Join Crowell & Moring attorneys Cheryl Falvey, Rukiya Mohamed, and Paul Mathis for a live discussion on trade secret and liability issues unique to AV developers as well as best practices.

To register, please click here.
Continue Reading Please Join Us for the Fifth Installment of our 2020 Webinar Series: The Revolving Door of Autonomous Vehicle Talent

As autonomous vehicles quickly move farther towards the mainstream, the underlying technology has become increasingly more valuable and has led to an uptick in the theft of autonomous vehicle (“AV”) trade secrets. Indeed, criminal prosecutions of former employees for trade secret theft have been on the rise, especially in the autonomous vehicle segment. Two recent cases underscore the enforcement agencies’ efforts to stem the rise in trade secret theft in the AV segment. Anthony Scott Levandowski was a former executive at both Uber and Google. He departed Google and created a new company named Ottomotto, LLC that was later purchased by Uber. Levandowski pled guilty to theft of trade secrets from Google, admitting that he downloaded approximately 14,000 files from an internal, password-protected Google server to his personal laptop, including a key internal tracking document from Google that detailed the status of its self-driving car program. Levandowki faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, and $250,000 fine plus restitution.
Continue Reading Prosecutions of Trade Secret Theft by Former Employees in Autonomous Vehicle Development

On August 26th, 2019, a federal indictment was unsealed, revealing that federal prosecutors have brought 33 criminal charges against a former Google engineer who worked on the company’s self-driving car project from its founding in 2009 through his resignation in January 2016. The indictment alleges that in the months before his departure, the former Google employee downloaded from a secure database multiple engineering, manufacturing and business files related to Google’s custom LiDAR and self-driving car technology. The indictment further alleges that when the employee stole the files he was also working for two of Google’s main competitors in the self-driving space, Tyto LiDAR LLC, and 280 Systems, Inc.
Continue Reading Unsealed Indictment Reveals Criminal Charges Related to Uber/Waymo Dispute

Criminal trade secret prosecutions have been on the rise nationwide. The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI have been partnering with businesses to combat trade secret theft and to vindicate the rights of corporate victims of such crimes. Emerging industries are a natural arena for trade secret theft – as new technologies start to

Autonomous vehicle technology, while still young, is already a major catalyst of trade secrets-related litigation. In 2018, Uber settled a lawsuit alleging theft of self-driving technology trade secrets from Waymo (Google’s self-driving car spinoff) for $245 million. With the future of the automotive market (and trillions of dollars) at stake, self-driving technology trade secrets are