Welcome back to Week in Review! We’ve got a ton of stories for you this week, including a new AI-powered browser from Arc; not one but TWO hacks; Gemini email summaries; and much more. Have a great weekend!
Look out, Google: AI-powered search engine Perplexity released Perplexity Labs, which gives Pro subscribers a tool that can craft reports, spreadsheets, dashboards, and more. Perplexity Labs can conduct research and analysis using tools like web search, code execution, and chart and image creation to craft reports and visualizations. All in around 10 minutes. We haven’t had a chance to test it, and knowing the shortcomings of AI, I’m sure not everything will come out flawlessly. But it certainly sounds pretty awesome.
Luckey’s luck: The feud between Oculus founder Palmer Luckey and Mark Zuckerberg appears to be over: The pair announced a collaboration between Facebook and Luckey’s company Anduril to build extended reality (XR) devices for the U.S. military. The product family they’re building is called EagleEye, which will be an ecosystem of devices.
Not awesome: We don’t definitively know whether AI is beginning to take over roles previously done by humans. But a recent World Economic Forum survey found that 40% of employers plan to cut staff where AI can automate tasks. That can’t be good.
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Everyone’s making a browser: The Browser Company said this week that it’s considering selling or open sourcing its browser, Arc Browser, to focus on a new AI-powered browser called Dia. And it’s not the only one! Opera also said it’s building a new AI-focused browser, and Perplexity teased its browser, Comet, a few months ago.
At last: iPad users, rejoice! You can now talk to all your international friends with the new iPad-specific version of WhatsApp. Meta says that users will be able to take advantage of iPadOS multitasking features, such as Stage Manager, Split View, and Slide Over.
Oh, great: LexisNexis Risk Solutions, a data broker that uses personal information to help companies spot risks and fraud, reported a security breach affecting more than 364,000 people. A LexisNexis spokesperson told us that an unknown hacker accessed the company’s GitHub account, and the stolen data includes names, dates of birth, phone numbers, postal and email addresses, Social Security numbers, and driver’s license numbers.
And another one: Hackers reportedly accessed the personal phone of White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, obtaining contact information used to impersonate her and contact other high-ranking officials. It seems that AI was used to impersonate her voice.
Can it cook my meals? Gmail users no longer have to tap an option to summarize an email with AI. The AI will now automatically summarize the content when needed, without requiring user interaction. That means you have to opt out if you don’t want Gemini summarizing your stuff.
Billion with a B: General Catalyst has invested $1 billion into Grammarly, the 16-year-old writing assistant startup. Grammarly will use the new funds for its sales and marketing efforts, freeing up existing capital to make strategic acquisitions.
In the heights: Tinder is testing a new feature that will allow people to add a “height preference” in their search for love. This isn’t a hard filter, Tinder says, as it won’t actually block or exclude profiles but instead inform recommendations.
10 years in the making: Carma Technology, which was formed in 2007 by SOSV Ventures founder Sean O’Sullivan, filed a lawsuit earlier this year against Uber, alleging the company infringed on five of its patents. The lawsuit is fairly new, but the allegations go back almost a decade.
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It might have been a short week, but there was still plenty of news, including another Zoox recall, an update on the Stellantis-Amazon partnership, and a few startup-funding deals.
One item of note: This week, I wrote about Carma Technology and its patent infringement lawsuit against Uber. This isn’t a patent troll situation, and the IP attorneys I have spoken with say it will be a challenging case for Uber.
The gist? Carma, which was formed in 2007 by serial entrepreneur and SOSV Ventures founder Sean O’Sullivan, filed a lawsuit earlier this year against Uber, alleging the company infringed on five of its patents that are related to the system of matching riders (or packages) with capacity in vehicles. In other words, ride-sharing.
IP attorney Larry Ashery provided the money quote that explains why this is such a complicated and challenging case.
“What’s important to understand here is, Carma isn’t just asserting five patents. They have had a very sophisticated strategy of patent procurement that they’ve been working on for the past 18 years.”
Carma’s five patents are part of a 30-patent family that are all related and connected to the original filing date. That matters because each of the five asserted patents contains multiple patent claims, which define the legal boundaries of the invention. These individual claims — not just the patents as a whole — are what Carma is asserting against Uber.
That means Uber will have to address and defend against each asserted claim, making the litigation more complex and difficult to defeat, Ashery noted.
Let’s get into the rest of the news.
A few little birds have been chirping at us for months now about a new autonomous vehicle technology startup that has been quietly plugging along for a year. The interesting nugget about this startup — which is called Bedrock Robotics — is who is behind it: Boris Sofman, who led Waymo’s self-driving trucks program and previously co-founded and led the popular consumer robotics company Anki.
The San Francisco-based startup is still in stealth, but my sources tell me it has raised considerable venture funds. Bedrock Robotics is working on a self-driving kit that retrofits onto construction equipment and other heavy machinery, according to a filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
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Firefly Aerospace received a $50 million investment from Northrop Grumman as part of its Series D round. This investment will further advance production of the startup’s co-developed medium launch vehicle, now known as Eclipse.
Pallet, a warehouse logistics software startup based in Fremont, California, raised $27 million in a Series B funding round led by General Catalyst. Bain Capital Ventures, Activant Capital, and Bessemer Venture Partners also participated.
Volteras, a London-based startup building virtual connective tissue that will allow plugged-in EVs to offer their batteries to support the grid, closed an $11.1 million Series A led by Union Square Ventures, with participation from Edenred, Exor, Long Journey Ventures, and Wex.
Way Data Technologies, a fleet management startup founded by veterans of Lucid Motors and Wolt, raised €2.6 million ($2.95 million) in pre-seed funding led by Pale Blue Dot, with participation from 10x Founders and Greens Ventures.
Rivr’s four-wheeled, stair-climbing delivery robot — which its CEO and founder, Marko Bjelonic, describes as a dog on roller skates — will ferry packages from Veho vans directly to customers’ front doors as part of a pilot program in Austin, Texas. Both companies see this small pilot as a critical step toward solving a unique slice of the end-to-end autonomous delivery journey.
TuSimple (now CreateAI) sent a trove of sensitive data — effectively the blueprint of an American-made autonomous vehicle system — to a Beijing-owned firm after committing to the U.S. government that it would cease such transfers under a national security agreement. The revelation, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, prompted numerous “not surprised” responses from several readers and sources within the industry.
Zoox issued its second voluntary software recall in a month, following a collision between one of its robotaxis and an e-scooter rider in San Francisco on May 8. The incident is notable, largely for what happened after the unoccupied Zoox vehicle operating at low speed was struck by the e-scooter after braking to yield at an intersection.
According to Zoox, the e-scooterist fell to the ground directly next to the vehicle and the “robotaxi began to move and stopped after completing the turn, but did not make further contact with the e-scooterist.”
In other Zoox news, the company announced it was the “official robotaxi partner of Resorts World Las Vegas.” As part of the deal, there will be a dedicated and Zoox-branded robotaxi pickup and drop-off location at Resorts World Las Vegas.
The Tesla Cybertruck is having a rough time. Dozens of unsold Tesla Cybertrucks are piling up at a Detroit shopping center parking lot. And while Cybertruck owners are now allowed by Tesla to trade in their vehicles for the first time since they hit the market, they’ll face a steep depreciation hit. CarGurus recently showed depreciation rates of up to 45%.
Meanwhile, Tesla sales in Europe and the U.K. have fallen by nearly half, according to data released by the European Automobile Manufacturers Association.
The Volkswagen emissions cheating scandal of 2015 rippled through the automotive sector and prompted the company (and later followed by others) to shift away from diesel and toward hybrids and electric vehicles. Now, four former Volkswagen executives have received prison sentences for their role.
Amazon is no longer working with Stellantis to create in-car software for the automaker’s vehicles. The partnership, first announced in January 2022, was part of Stellantis’ plan to generate $22.5 billion annually from software. Stellantis told TechCrunch it would be pivoting to an Android-based system.
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A little-known patent infringement lawsuit could have big implications for Uber — and potentially dozens of other companies.
Carma Technology, a company formed in 2007 by serial entrepreneur and SOSV Ventures founder Sean O’Sullivan, filed a lawsuit earlier this year against Uber alleging the company infringed on five of its patents that are related to the system of matching riders (or packages) with capacity in vehicles. In other words, ride-sharing — a business Carma operated in some form for a decade until it changed its business model and applied its tech to road-pricing services like GPS tolling and HOV verification.
Carma has requested a jury trial and is seeking a permanent injunction against the company, mandatory future royalties on any Uber products that infringe on those patents as well as damages, and other costs related to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit, which has been quietly winding its way through the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, is relatively new. The allegations have been swirling for nearly a decade.
Carma lawyers first contacted Uber about its ride-sharing and ground transportation patents in 2016, according to the complaint. That was an auspicious time for Uber. The startup, which was founded just seven years before, had shot into the stratosphere — in terms of valuation, growth, and gravitas.
Uber was valued at $66 billion at the time, and had a reputation for taking big, legally sticky swings into new markets that helped it grow to hundreds of cities in the U.S., Europe, Canada, and the Middle East. It had raised more than $12.5 billion in venture capital, and was using it to launch new products and even push into autonomous vehicles.
Uber might have had the business model and the market share, but it didn’t have the specific ride-sharing patents, O’Sullivan told TechCrunch in a recent interview. Carma does — plus a couple dozen others. Uber was allegedly aware of that fact as early as 2015 when the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected one of its applications because it ran up against existing patents held by O’Sullivan and Carma, according to the lawsuit.
At least four of Uber’s patent applications — and in some cases numerous revisions to those patents — were rejected between 2016 and 2019 for the same reason. The ride-share giant would eventually abandon some of those applications.
Uber still holds hundreds of other patents covering a broad swath of technology and ideas that have been applied to its business.
O’Sullivan argues the core service of what Carma’s patents describes is exactly how the modern day ride-sharing experience operates. And he contends that Uber is infringing on those patents even if the company’s business model operates more like a taxi business.
The case is a complicated one, intellectual property attorney Larry Ashery told TechCrunch. (Ashery is not involved in the case.)
“What’s important to understand here is Carma isn’t just asserting five patents,” said Ashery, whose practice is based in Greater Philadelphia area. “They have had a very sophisticated strategy of patent procurement that they’ve been working on for the past 18 years.”
He noted the five patents are part of a 30-patent family that are all related and connected to the original filing date. That matters because each of the five asserted patents contains multiple patent claims, which define the legal boundaries of the invention. These individual claims — not just the patents as a whole — are what Carma is asserting against Uber.
That means Uber will have to address and defend against each asserted claim, making the litigation more complex and difficult to defeat, he noted. Ashery said Uber’s strategy will likely be to try to invalidate these patents, which will be a challenge.
While Carma might have been armed with these specific patents, it took nine years for the company to actually sue Uber. Bunsow De Mory, a Redwood City-based law firm, is representing Carma in the case.
“When any business starts, it’s all about just actually capturing the market and winning in the marketplace,” O’Sullivan said. “Patents are meant to protect against aggressors from stealing the idea, but it’s not the main focus of your business to get patent revenue. It’s more as a protective mechanism.”
Carma, he said, has been “very busy building a multi-million dollar business and getting to profitability.” But there are other reasons for that nine-year time gap, O’Sullivan explained. For one, the cost.
“It’s incredibly expensive to sue a large company over IP and Carma is a relatively small organization,” he said in a recent interview. “To come up with the $10 million-plus to take on a big patent suit, which is what it takes these days, is not a small task.”
O’Sullivan said the company did reach out to Uber as far back as 2016 “in the hopes that they would do the right thing and license our patents.”
“It really took us a while to come to terms with the idea that we actually had to sue Uber in order for them to respond,” he added.
Uber declined to comment on the lawsuit. Uber’s attorneys did make two procedural motions this week, including a sealed motion to dismiss for improper venue or alternatively to transfer venue for convenience. This procedural motion signals Uber’s desire for the case to be litigated in the Northern District of California, where it is based, rather than in Texas.
Notably, the lawsuit is aimed at Uber, not Lyft or other companies using ride-sharing. O’Sullivan explained Carma is “going after the biggest player first” and noted that about 60 other companies are likely infringing on its patents.
The primary argument in the lawsuit ties back to five patents that have been granted to O’Sullivan and Carma, which was originally named Avego.
It all started with O’Sullivan’s frustration with traffic congestion, which ultimately led to thoughts about car-pooling and how an automated system using smartphones could help people coordinate rides. That idea would turn into the startup Avego and become the basis of the first patent — No. 7,840,427.
The first patent, which O’Sullivan applied for in 2007 and was granted in 2010, created a shared transport system that matches empty space in a vehicle with riders or goods. The system established a set of pick-up and drop-off points and then matched users and drivers traveling along a similar route.
Before the patent was granted Avego’s ride-sharing app debuted on Apple’s App Store in 2008, the same year the iPhone launched. Avego showed off its so-called Shared Transport app at the DEMO conference in 2008, which showed how a driver with an iPhone 3G could use the app to accept or reject a ride request. Once accepted, the rider was notified as the driver approached and then was prompted to enter a pin code to prove their identity and authorize an electronic payment.
Avego, which would later change its name to Carma, was focused on the promotion of ride-sharing (as in carpooling) and not taxis, according to O’Sullivan. The company operated the carpooling business until October 2016, when the app was withdrawn from the App store. However, it still had other forms of ride-sharing, like its partnership with Toyota, until phasing it out altogether in April 2018.
“If you look at the definition of ride-sharing in federal legislation, it is carpooling,” O’Sullivan said, noting that Carma built up a multi-million dollar ride-sharing business in its early days.
When Uber and Lyft came in and tried to co-opt the term ride-sharing to mean taxi-hailing it caused confusion in the market, prompting Carma to change its business model and apply its tech in new ways. “Uber and Lyft really took ride-sharing in the direction of taxi services, but our company Carma didn’t want to,” O’Sullivan said.
Carma is still focused on reducing traffic congestion, but its tech is applied to a different business model.
Today, Carma uses its app to help transit authorities manage tolls and express lanes — a product line the company first rolled out in 2013. For instance, the app can be used by a driver on a toll road or even track vehicle occupancy for HOV lanes. The app is designed to get more riders into cars and reward those people by reducing tolls or giving drivers access to the HOV lane.
The idea, O’Sullivan said, is to offer toll authorities a way to reduce capital expenditure by up to 20 times by not using large gantry-based infrastructure systems. And it has paid off.
O’Sullivan says Carma is profitable, although pursuing this lawsuit will cut into its bottom line. Still, he said it’s worth the cost.
“I think there’s a danger in society where we can’t rely on our patents to protect the rights of of the inventors, and the patent system exists specifically to protect the rights of investors, not to reward copycats that just have happen to have deeper pockets,” he said, pointing to Uber’s attempts at its own patents and the rejection of them by the USPTO.
“We think it’s something that’s important to recognize that the rights of a relatively small inventor, are being trampled upon. But it’s not just for Carma, really. We think of this as a problem for the entire system. It’s a test of whether the rule of law still applies when a powerful tech giant is involved.”
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