Waymo to keep robotaxi safety details secret, court rules

On Tuesday, a California court ruled that Waymo could keep certain details of its technology secret.

The company filed a lawsuit against the California Department of Motor Vehicles in order to keep some information about its deployment permit, as well as emails between the company and the department, which were originally filed by an undisclosed third party.

The ruling by the California Superior Court, Sacramento, could set a precedent for trade secret protection in the industry, as well as public access to information that has to do with public safety, but which businesses claim contain trade secrets.

In its lawsuit, Waymo argued that being forced to reveal trade secrets would undermine its investments into automated driving technology and have a chilling effect across the industry.

The court reached the right decision in granting the 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 California Department of Motor Vehicles.

Like any other company looking to test and deploy in California, Waymo had to submit information about its safety practices and technology to the Department of Motor Vehicles, which then followed up with more specific questions. When the public records request for the permit application information was received, the agency gave the company the chance to censor any sections that might reveal trade secrets. The package was sent to the third party with major portions blocked out. The requester asked for the power to be cut off, and the Department of Motor Vehicles advised the requester to file a retraining order against them. On February 2, a judge issued a restraining order that gave the company more time to seek an injunction against the disclosure of the material.

The lawsuit was filed because the company wants to protect details about how it identifies and navigates through certain conditions, how it determines the circumstances under which it will return control to a human driver, and how it addresses disengagement incidents and collision incidents.

The R&D efforts take many years and an enormous financial investment, according to the declaration shared with the court. Waymo has invested a lot of money researching and developing its products.

It is difficult to determine if the information contains trade secrets without being able to see them.

Matthew Wansley is a law professor at Yeshiva University and the former general counsel of nuTonomy.

Wansley said that software failures that detail problems or predicting how other agents in the world are going to behalf is highly confidential because it could reveal information about how the technology works, allowing competitors to either copy it or just assess where they are relative to a certain business. It makes sense that a company wouldn't share that information with the public. Wansley said he would be more willing to share information if the regulator promised confidentiality.

The categories of information they are talking about are broad, according to Wansley. There are probably some. Does it include everything they sent? It's almost certainly not. If everything they claim is a trade secret is actually a trade secret, I would be surprised. It is difficult to know the specific information that they share with regulators.

The public will never know. While the business community might find this outcome to be a success, the state of California and the public at large may not trust their regulators to make decisions on their behalf.

Many regulators aren't exactly engineers because of the complexity of the technology. Some would argue that the public has a right to know if critical, public-facing decisions are being made properly.

I think in some respects, this goes to the heart of how you develop public confidence in public vehicles if they are simply a black box. Companies will say that you don't need to know what's happening in the black box because it's safe. The black box has been signed off on by the Department of Motor Vehicles, and that should be good for the public.

The range of information it gives to the public has been pointed out by the company to allay any fears about its technology. It has submitted a safety self-assessment to the U.S. Department of Transportation and is publishing a guide for law enforcement.