Engineer spends $6,000 invalidating Waymo's lidar patents
Now Waymo itself could be sued for patent infringement.
An engineer with no connection to the self-driving industry has spent
$6,000 of his own money to stop Alphabet's self-driving car business
Waymo from patenting key technology. Following a challenge filed by Eric
Swildens, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) rejected 53 out of
56 claims in Waymo's 936 patent. The reason for his action? He just
"couldn't imagine the [lidar] circuit [described in the 936 patent]
didn't exist prior," Ars Technica reported.
Filed in 2013 and granted in 2016, the 936 patent was a cornerstone of
Waymo's lawsuit against Uber, which began in December 2016. In a
nutshell, Waymo accused the ride-hailing giant of infringing its lidar
design patent and using intellectual property allegedly stolen by
engineer Anthony Levandowski. Uber eventually agreed to redesign its
lidar and gave Waymo $245 million worth of equity to settle the rest of
the lawsuit. It also promised not to copy Waymo's technology in the
future.
Now it turns out Uber may not have had to give in, as most parts of the
936 patent claims were rejected. Moreover, one of the reasons for the
rejection is that some of the core design solutions were previously
patented by another lidar manufacturer, Velodyne. Coincidentally,
Velodyne used to sell its lidars to Waymo before the latter decided to
build a product of its own from scratch.
Theoretically, Velodyne could now accuse Waymo of infringing its own 558
patent, based on the USPTO's recent ruling. However, protecting lidar
innovation is quite a messy business: Velodyne itself has defended the
558 patent for some time after a startup called Quanergy claimed that it
infringed its intellectual property.
Even though the USPTO has given a "final rejection" regarding the 936
patent, there are still ways for Waymo to appeal and fight for it.
Swildens also told Ars Technica that he's currently too busy to file any
more patent challenges.
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