When Google subsidiary Waymo filed a lawsuit against Uber last year, the case was seen as a battle over the future of self-driving cars. A former Waymo engineer, Anthony Levandowski, had allegedly stolen files related to the company’s lidar technology—a light-detection sensor that helps autonomous vehicles “see”—and left to form his own startup, Ottomotto, which Uber then purchased. At issue was whether Uber’s decision to buy the startup was really just an attempt to poach trade secrets from one of its competitors.
For most observers, the case turned out to be fairly anticlimactic: after struggling to convince a judge that Uber had acted in bad faith, Waymo chose to settle for a mere $245 million. But for experts in trade-secret litigation, the lawsuit contained a dramatic twist—one with significant implications for corporate acquisitions. Late in the game—too late, as it happened—Waymo’s lawyers accused Uber of “misappropriation by acquisition”—acquiring a trade secret while having reason to know that the party who acquired it did so via improper means—shedding light on a little-known but important legal concept.
“Executives should pay attention to…
