California Court Decides Waymo Can Keep Its Autonomous Vehicle Tech Secret

pcmag.com:

A California court this week ruled that Waymo can keep certain details of its self-driving technology under wraps.

As TechCrunch reports, in January, Alphabet's autonomous vehicle subsidiary sued the California Department of Motor Vehicles to prevent "sensitive trade secret information and records" from being made public.

According to the complaint, proprietary information branded as confidential and otherwise "not shared outside Waymo" was provided last year to the DMV, which handed over those redacted materials to an unidentified requester. When the third party challenged the censored sections, however, the DMV delegated Waymo to resolve the matter.

"The emerging industry devoted to the development of autonomous technology is highly competitive," the lawsuit said. "Revealing this information to Waymo's competitors, either directly or through publication in the media, would provide [them] with unique insight into Waymo's approach and strategy … that they would not have but for this disclosure."

That includes details about how autonomous vehicles identify and navigate certain conditions, when the tech decides to hand control to a human driver, the firm's internal process for dealing with collisions, and the software's ability to manage the one-way streets and hills of San Francisco where Waymo operates a robotaxi service. Thanks to the California Superior Court in Sacramento, Waymo doesn't have to worry about that—for now.

"We're pleased that the court reached the right decision in granting Waymo's request for a preliminary injunction, precluding the disclosure of competitively sensitive trade secrets that Waymo had included in the permit application it submitted to the CA DMV," a Waymo spokesperson said.

Neither Waymo