San Francisco — Waymo — formerly the Google self-driving car project, which stands for a new way forward in mobility — won a ruling that may strengthen its trade-secrets suit against Uber, even as the Alphabet unit fell short of its goal to bring its rival’s driverless-car program to a standstill. US district Judge William Alsup approved of Uber’s move last month to demote the engineer leading its self-driving unit to keep him away from related laser technology and safeguard secrets that Waymo alleges were stolen. In the ruling — issued under seal on Thursday and made public on Monday with some redactions — Alsup said Anthony Levandowski must remain quarantined from Uber’s work on lidar (light detection and ranging), the laser component that helps an autonomous vehicle see its surroundings. Alsup wrote that Waymo "has made a strong showing that Levandowski absconded with over 14,000 files" from the company when he left last year to form his own start-up, Otto, that was then acquired...
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