Uber’s Request To Stay Trial Denied, Death March Will Proceed

It seems Uber is getting desperate to buy enough time to come up with a counter plan against Waymo’s case. Unfortunately for the cab-hailing firm, its request for a stay on the trial has been denied. What’s more, the Judge has ordered the company again to release the documents tied to the accusations of theft of trade secrets.

In the most recent court meeting, District Judge William Alsup told Uber that the lawsuit will proceed on schedule, TechCrunch reports. Requests pertaining to new discovery has been limited as well, which shows just how much the judge wants this over and done with.

Uber was basically hoping to extend the process while making its own appeals when its argument for arbitration between former executive Anthony Levandowski and Waymo failed. The judge’s ruling means that there will be no pause in the proceedings and the trial will be conducted on October 2nd of this year.

This gives the cab-hailing firm less than four months to get its act together and form a concrete defense against Waymo, which is currently busy sharpening its own daggers. On that note, the judge also has a few choice words for Google’s autonomous driving division.

“I think you’re going to lose on all these patent claims unless you pull a rabbit out of a hat,” Alsup said. “You’re the one who wants the trial date… You’re the one who should streamline this.”

The judge is referring to the patent claims that Waymo is throwing in with its case. The judge doesn’t see this part going anywhere and would only be wasting time.

Judge Alsup is instead encouraging Waymo to focus on getting the key documents from Uber, which he already told the cab-hailing startup to provide, Business Insider reports. The most important of these files is the due diligence report that Uber created when it was in the process of acquiring Otto, the startup that Levandowski created after leaving Google.