Waymo v. Uber confirms it’s all about the trade secrets

Scene: San Francisco, California. Courtroom 8, 19th Floor; 450 Golden Gate Avenue.

Players: Uber and Google’s elf-driving sub, Waymo.

Immaterial Background: Uber acquired a company (Otto) started by a dude (Levandowski). But the dude was at Waymo before that, and he allegedly took 9.7 gigabytes of Waymo’s self-driving tech with him.

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Generally, when suing somebody, you want to sue them for everything. Stealing trade secrets. Interfering with contracts. Hacking computers.

But the California Uniform Trade Secrets Act doesn’t let you do that. The Act supersedes (or preempts, if you prefer) all claims based on the theft of confidential information, except breach of contract . The only way you get around this bar is if the claim is based on something — whether some fact or some wrong — qualitatively different than the trade secret claim.

Scores of cases recognize this. Now we can add another one to that list: Waymo v. Uber.

Waymo’s especially useful. It tackles head-on the argument that plaintiffs can allege other claims as alternative arguments, in the event courts conclude there are no trade secrets in play.

Nuh uh, says Waymo. Everything’s preempted. If you’re suing for theft of trade secrets and it turns out the stolen information wasn’t a trade secret, you’ve got nothing left (save a potential contract claim).