[Fricken]

It doesn't invalidate Waymo's whole case, just Waymo's infringement claims against patent 936. Now the case is only about trade secrets.

I'm not seeing what it is about the article that makes it a hit piece. Mark Harris, the guy who wrote it has been covering Uber, Waymo, and self driving cars for years. He's always digging up weird stuff like this. When Apple's project Titan was rumours and hearsay it was Mark Harris out there digging up tangible evidence about what was going on. Harris is pretty good at his job.

He can only report on Swildon's stated reasons for going to all the trouble he did, and Harris can't actually prove that Swildon's efforts were the real reason Waymo withdrew it's infringement claim, only that it seems that way.