Why Waymo wants to delay its October 11 trial date against Uber?

Waymo, the self-driving car unit owned by Alphabet has requested the federal court judge to postpone the October 11 trial date against Uber, citing it has recently acquired some new evidence that is critical to the lawsuit.

Waymo has been locked in an intense legal battle with Uber over trade secret theft claiming that a former Waymo employee Anthony Lewandowski downloaded more than 14,000 confidential files before leaving to set up a self-driving truck company Otto, which was later acquired by Uber. Uber, however, has denied using any of Waymo’s trade secrets.

The new evidence in the case is the due diligence report from cybersecurity firm Stroz Friedberg, which Uber had hired to vet Otto before the acquisition. Now that Waymo has the documents, it is requesting the court that the October 11 date be pushed back.

Alphabet says it would be "unfairly prejudiced if the trial proceeds as initially scheduled on October 10 without additional time to pursue this mountain of new evidence." In other words, the company requires more time to complete the investigation for the new evidence that it has received.

For now, though, the new filing from Waymo’s lawyers argued that the so-called Stroz Report “unequivocally establishes the facts underlying Waymo’s trade secret misappropriation claims.” “Waymo should not and cannot be forced to waive claims for misappropriation of trade secrets in addition to the nine trade secrets Waymo has designated for trial,” the company said.