Waymo puts Uber lawyers in hot seat over trade-secret theft

Waymo claims Uber Technologies Inc. had an accomplice in the theft of invaluable driverless technology trade secrets — the ride-hailing giant’s own lawyers.

Uber relied heavily on attorneys at San Francisco’s Morrison & Foerster to suss out and contain any proprietary information that may have been taken by one of Waymo’s lead engineers, Anthony Levandowski, when he abruptly quit last year. He later joined Uber, bringing with him other former engineers from Alphabet’s self-driving unit.

Waymo has alleged that the lawyers helped cover up the theft and said it wants to call them as witnesses. U.S. District Judge William Alsup indicated at a hearing Wednesday that he probably won’t disqualify the firm from continuing to represent Uber, but he put it on notice that its role in the high-stakes drama will be an issue at trial in October.

“MoFo is a character in the story to be told to the jury,” Alsup said, using the firm’s nickname. “MoFo’s name is going to come up time and time again.”

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Waymo wants jurors to learn about how the lawyers handled Uber’s $680 million acquisition of Levandowski’s company, Ottomotto, and the engineer’s move to the ride-hailing company. Waymo is aiming to use those details to buttress its claims Uber colluded with Levandowski to steal prized technology in the heated race to commercialize autonomous vehicles.

Arturo Gonzalez, a Morrison & Foerster partner representing Uber, said before Wednesday’s hearing that Waymo is trying to knock his firm off the case out of desperation.

“Having found no evidence to support their claims, they ask themselves ‘What do we do?’” he said. “And someone raises their hand and says, ‘I know, let’s try to disqualify their lawyer.’”

Uber contends Waymo is mischaracterizing the actions of its outside lawyers, who it says did the right thing by hiring cyberforensics firm Stroz Friedberg to quarantine any sensitive information Levandowski had from Waymo or Google — and wall it off from Uber — during the due-diligence vetting of the Ottomotto acquisition.

“MoFo and Stroz were retained for the very purpose of preventing any violation of intellectual property rights in connection with Uber’s acquisition of Ottomotto, and were contractually bound not to (and did not) disclose to Uber any confidential or proprietary Waymo information,” Uber argued in a court filing.

Waymo claims the law firm trafficked in stolen files — or at least descriptions of stolen files — when its lawyers helped structure the Ottomotto acquisition. That’s why the lawyers should be required to testify and the firm as a whole should be disqualified from defending Uber, Waymo contends.

“MoFo attorneys appear all over critical, relevant documents to this case,” Waymo said in a court filing. “Possession by MoFo of stolen documents, the circumstances under which it acquired those documents, and the treatment of those documents after acquisition by MoFo are all directly relevant to Waymo’s trade secret claims.”

In recent weeks, lawyers at another firm representing Uber — Boies, Schiller & Flexner — have taken on a more prominent role drafting court filings and representing the company in hearings.

Waymo has also accused Stroz and Morrison of violating court orders to turn over proprietary information, including files from the law firm’s representation of Levandowski in arbitration proceedings brought by Google last year. A hearing on those claims is scheduled for Aug. 16.

In other Uber news, former CEO Travis Kalanick hired former San Francisco U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag and one of her colleagues at Orrick to represent him in the suit.

Haag held her post as Northern California’s top prosecutor from 2010 to 2015 under President Barack Obama, leading one of the largest regional outposts of the Justice Department and one of the most active in white-collar prosecutions. The other attorney Kalanick retained from the San Francisco law firm, Walt Brown, also specializes in corporate criminal defense. Orrick confirmed the hiring while declining to comment further.

Joel Rosenblatt is a Bloomberg writer. Email: jrosenblatt@bloomberg.net