SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge has blocked Uber Technologies Inc. from using information contained in 14,000 files allegedly misappropriated from Google Inc. by a former engineer at Waymo, Google’s driverless car division.
In a 26-page ruling unsealed Monday morning, U.S. District Judge William Alsup also ordered Uber to remove the engineer, Anthony Levandowski, from any role in developing LiDAR technology, the laser technology that helps self-driving cars “see” their surroundings, and to prohibit him from consulting on that technology with other Uber employees. Alsup instructed Uber to return the pilfered files to Waymo by May 31 and to provide a detailed accounting of every person who was exposed to their contents.
