Uber admits finding one of the allegedly stolen Waymo document in an employee's PC

Marking the first time that Uber has officially acknowledged that Waymo’s stolen documents are in possession of any Uber employee, Uber’s attorney Arturo Gonzalez said at a court hearing that one of the stolen 14,000 documents was found on a personal device belonging to Sameer Kshirsagar.

Emphasising that the papers were not discovered on Uber’s computers but employee's personal device, Gonsalez said: “We did collect documents from him, and thus far we have only found one document from his computer that matches the documents identified in the complaint.”

Though Uber found only one document, Waymo claims that Kshirsagar downloaded several confidential documents in June 2016, one month before resigning and joining Anthony Levandowski at Uber.

Kshirsagar is one of the three accused by Waymo for stealing the confidential documents. Waymo claims that around 14000 documents are in possession of Levandowski, while the rest are alleged to be with Kshirsagar and Radu Raduta.

Waymo is now asking for Uber to turn over those stolen documents as part of the discovery process. However, Uber argues that it cannot hand over anything from Levandowski without violating his Fifth Amendment rights and that it has already thoroughly searched for the documents at Uber.

Uber also added that it has so far interviewed 85 current and former employees, 42 of whom worked in the automotive division. Uber searched 10 of the employees’ computers and looked through the company’s git repository for files that matched Waymo’s descriptions.

"We searched 12 terabytes of data in two weeks. That's the equivalent of 8.3 billion pages of text. So any suggestion that we’re not looking is extremely unfair. We found 3,100 hits," said Gonzalez. "But you know what? They're not substantive. Most of these 14,000 documents are not trade secrets at all."

However, that argument didn't find favour with US District Judge William Alsup, who is overseeing the case and has asked Uber to "do more to produce the stolen 14k documents." The judge has asked Uber to search using 15 terms provided by Waymo, first on the employees’ computers that had already been searched, then on ten employees’ computers selected by Waymo, and then on all other servers and devices connected to employees who work on Uber’s LiDAR system.

The parties will gather tomorrow for another hearing, which will focus on Levandowski's recent argument that the Fifth Amendment should protect him from speaking about the 14,000 missing files.