A San Francisco district judge on Tuesday granted Alphabet’s request to push back the trial date for its case against Uber over self-driving car technology.

Waymo requested a delay after a key piece of evidence was made public, because the company said it now has a mountain of new evidence to go through, making an Oct. 10 trial date unfeasible.

“New evidence continues to come to light through thousands of documents and hundreds of previously unexamined devices that defendants are only now turning over” a Waymo spokesperson said.

However, William Alsup, the judge on the case, questioned whether Waymo would find anything new, saying the company has “exaggerated their need for a continuance.”

Alphabet’s Waymo unit alleges that former Waymo engineer Anthlony Levandowski stole 14,000 documents containing trade secrets relating to self-driving car technology from Waymo and brought them to Uber. Levandowski worked for Google’s self-driving car unit before starting his own company Otto, which Uber acquired.

Uber responded to the delay with the following statement: “The Court has made clear that Waymo’s case is not what they hoped, and that more time will not change the hard fact that their trade secrets never came to Uber.”

Alsup added that Waymo still has a strong case against Levandowski, who has invoked his Fifth Amendment rights in the case.

The trial is now scheduled to start on Dec. 4 with jury selection starting Nov. 29.

Source: Tech CNBC
Alphabet's Waymo granted a delay until December in its trial against Uber