A Silicon Valley entrepreneur is suing Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick for $1 billion, alleging that Kalanick and his business associates stole the technology that drives the multi-billion dollar cell phone-based car service.
Halpern claims that he founded his company Celluride Wireless in 2003, 6 years prior to Uber’s creation. The lawsuit alleges that Uber co-founders Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp formed a start-up in 2009 based on an idea stolen from his company and that they cut him out.
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According to Halpern, in 2006 he was working on a mobile application called Celluride. During that time he shared his ideas with Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick, who rented the same office space in San Francisco. Kalanick allegedly use Halpern’s technology to run Uber.
In his lawsuit, Halpern lays claim over “a significant share” of Sathe n Francisco-based car sharing companywhich has an estimated worth of $50 billion according to a recent market valuation, earning it the title of the world’s most-valuable start-up.
Uber denied the allegations and called the lawsuit “completely baseless”.
Interestingly, this is not the first lawsuit of its kind filed by Halpern. Halpern sued the founder of start-up Offerpal Media Anu Shukla for violating an agreement and not giving him a stake in the company. That lawsuit was dismissed by a California State Court in 2009.
