Just a few days after Uber Technologies Inc.’s legal team told a judge that Waymo LLC was asking for “astronomical figures” in its trade theft suit against Uber, Waymo today clarified that it “only seeks $1.859 billion.”

Waymo, which is Alphabet Inc.’s self-driving car division, said in a new filing that it believes that $1.859 billion is a reasonable figure given what it calls Uber’s “misappropriation” of its LiDAR technology. Waymo claims this technology had been stolen by former Google employee Anthony Levandowski before he left to found his own self-driving car company, which was quickly purchased by Uber for more than $680 million.

Waymo’s filing was primarily concerned with defending its expert damages witness, Michael Wagner. Uber’s legal team questioned Wagner’s methodologies for estimating the damages potentially caused by Uber’s alleged trade theft, calling Wagner’s figures “unreliable” and “speculative.”

Uber’s team argued that Wagner had been trying to recover future lost profits in his assessment, but Waymo said in its filing that Wagner “is simply looking at Uber’s own estimate of how valuable the technology was to Uber at the time of acquisition.”

Waymo also argued against Uber’s claim that the figures are inherently speculative since the self-driving car industry is still developing. “Rather, Wagner’s opinions are based on Uber’s own forecasts of its expected profitability deploying [autonomous vehicles] in the well-established, highly sophisticated ride-sharing market,” Waymo said.

Waymo has been building its case against Uber since February, but the company has asked a judge to postpone the start of the trial until Dec. 5, as it said it needs more time to sift through new evidence that it recently acquired from Uber. However, Uber’s legal team has requested that the trial begin as scheduled on Oct. 10. The judge has yet to make a final decision on whether Waymo will be allowed to push back the trial.

Photo: Uber Technologies