Why would it benefit Uber or its backers to hire him unofficially instead of hiring experts directly?

It seems like he was able to make a solid case for invalidating the patent, and hiring experts to investigate patent claims is pretty standard in patent lawsuits. It makes me wonder why Uber didn't hire such experts, or if they did and this guy beat them to the punch.

You don’t have to invalidate the patents at the USPTO. You can argue invalidity in court. Uber almost certainly looked for prior art.

And in most cases uber wouldn’t use ex parte re-examine. They’d do an inter partes review, which would them to stay in the proceeding and argue for invalidity.

What is the difference between inter partes review and ex parte re-examine?

The biggest difference is ex parte re-exam doesn't allow the requester to participate. It's just the patent owner and the examiners. If the patent owner makes an incorrect statement to try to keep the patent there is nothing you can do. An IPR is a full hearing on the validity. With evidence, depositions, briefing, and oral arguments.

Yeah, it makes Uber look kind of incompetent, like they didn't do their research (Google too). If he was hired by Uber to do the research, only Google would look incompetent.

It makes their experts look incompetent. Quite a bit of what this guy found should have been low-hanging fruit for an expert witness.

Any chance they were saving that for the trial?

Strategically, isn't it better for Uber to let Waymo yap on and on about it and then crush them during the trial than to ask the patent office for a review and let Waymo drop the issue before the trial even starts?

I mean... if I knew something embarrassing that opposing council didn't know, and I had no obligation to inform them, I would definitely see that knowledge as a weapon and a strategic tool. Letting Waymo drop it without embarrassment is a bit of a win for Waymo, IMO.

>Any chance they were saving that for the trial?

Yes.

>Strategically, isn't it better for Uber to let Waymo yap on and on about it and then crush them during the trial than to ask the patent office for a review and let Waymo drop the issue before the trial even starts?

Uber would have to inform Waymo of their invalidity theory way before trial. You can't spring new prior art right before trial.

The article begins by making a plausible story for his motivation. He had been sued for patent infringement in his own company - "overreaching patents" caused a lot of damage to him personally before and he saw Alphabet use one to attack Uber. And Uber is indeed smaller than Alphabet.