Alphabet asks federal judge to delay trial in Uber dispute
18 Sep 2017
Alphabet has asked a federal judge to delay further hearing on its lawsuit against Uber, as it needed time to work on new evidence produced by the ride-hailing company, Uber, and possibly more claims of trade-secret theft still to come.
Alphabet's self-driving car unit, Waymo's position received a boost earlier this month, when a federal court in California ordered that Uber had to turn over a ''due diligence'' report that it commissioned at the time it purchased Otto, the self-driving truck company started by Anthony Levandowski after leaving Google.
But following the 13 September decision, Waymo has alleged that Uber and the firm that prepared the report, Stroz Friedberg, had ''produced or made available a small portion of the material required.''
Lawyers for Waymo told the judge that they had not seen all of the communications and documents related to its preparation. The Alphabet self-driving unit also stressed that it needed additional time to depose a number of key players in the case, including another session with former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, it said in its filing.
According to Alphabet, it would be ''unfairly prejudiced if the trial proceeds as initially scheduled on October 10 without additional time to pursue this mountain of new evidence.''
Meanwhile Autonews reports Alphabet could invest up to $1 billion in ride-hailing company Lyft. The report adds that the technology company could invest the sum through either Google or CapitalG, its private equity firm and that meetings over the potential investment have been held in recent weeks.
According to commentators, with Alphabet fighting a bitter lawsuit it brought against Uber over stealing of trade secrets related to its autonomous vehicle technology, relations between the two companies have deteriorated rapidly.
Though Uber is the bigger of the two ride-hailing companies, Lyft has gained market share after it launched a major television campaign.
