SAN FRANCISCO—In a packed courtroom on the first day of the blockbuster Waymo v. Uber trade secrets trial, both sides presented their opening arguments. Charles Verhoeven, Waymo's top lawyer, said that Travis Kalanick, Uber's CEO from 2010 until mid-2017, was not playing fair in his company's efforts to catch up with Waymo.

"The evidence is going to show that Mr. Kalanick, the CEO at the time, made a decision that winning was more important than obeying the law," he said. "He made a decision to cheat. Because for him, winning at all costs, no matter what, was his culture and was what he was going to do. The evidence is going to do that he targeted and hired away one of its key engineers that had been with Chauffeur—that’s the name of the program—since its inception."

Waymo v. Uber began back in February 2017, when Waymo sued Uber and accused one of its own star engineers of stealing 14,000 files shortly before he left Waymo.

The former employee, Anthony Levandowski, went on to found a company that was quickly acquired by Uber. Levandowski refused to comply with his employer's demands during the course of this case and was fired. Uber has denied that it benefited in any way from Levandowski's actions.

Uber has significantly more to lose: the outcome of the case will likely determine which company will end up ahead in the cutthroat and rapidly growing autonomous vehicle sector.

Verhoeven likened Uber's behavior to a video game "cheat code."

"I didn’t know what cheat codes were because I was too old, I don’t play video games," he told the jury. "A cheat code is something that allows you to skip to the next level."

He explained that the jury would see evidence, "written documents, that Kalanick said he wanted to use Levandowski to leapfrog Google."

“We’re bringing this case because Uber is cheating," Verhoeven continued.

Fight for the future

As part of his hour-long opening statement and presentation, Verhoeven called Waymo's self-driving work "truly revolutionary technology," noting that once it "becomes normalized" it would "improve safety" and would dramatically reduce the tens of thousands of people that die in the United States every year from car accidents.

"These cars work better than humans, they’ll decrease the number of accidents dramatically. There’ll be less traffic congestion."

Verhoeven showed the jury and the public a promo video of what its cars look like in real life. He highlighted that the crux of Waymo's tech is its lidar, a light-emitting piece of equipment that serves effectively as the "eyes" of its self-driving fleet. The lidar is a rapidly spinning device atop the vehicles shoots light out in all directions at incredible speeds to create a "point cloud," or a 3D map of the world that the car and its on-board computers can understand.

Verhoeven also showed, as part of his slideshow, examples of contemporaneous notes, text messages and emails, particularly from Kalanick and John Bares, now the CEO of Carnegie Robotics in Pittsburgh. He worked for Uber's AV group for nearly three years, until October 2017.

Bares seems to have taken extensive notes in the run-up to Levandowski's January 2016 abrupt departure from Waymo and after. Once Levandowski left, he founded Ottomotto, a company that was then acquired by Uber for $680 million several months later.

It was in 2015 that Uber began to fully realize what an existential threat Waymo posed to its business model.

“We started from a huge gap with G, and I think we’ve all been sobered by how hard it is to close that gap, even with exceptional effort," Bares wrote to Kalanick.

Other messages shown in court to Kalanick said that Uber was able to lure Levandowski and others by the proposal of "selling a non-existent company." Those messages continue: “It was at this point that Levandowski first seriously considered leaving Google.”

Verhoeven hammered that it was Kalanick was the driving force behind the acquisition of Levandowski and Ottomotto.

More January 2016 notes from Bares say: “TK’s [Kalanick's] advice on legal: tell them we are going to do it, ask how to minimize risk, minimize pain.”

Verhoeven argued that Kalanick and Uber were effectively buying stolen intellectual property.

"Their plan was to set up this fake company and purchase the fake company to look like they were doing something legitimate when they weren’t," he said.