Alphabet on Thursday filed a lawsuit accusing Uber and its self-driving vehicle unit Otto of stealing technology from Waymo, a subsidiary of the Google parent company.

"Otto and Uber have taken Waymo's intellectual property so that they could avoid incurring the risk, time and expense of independently developing their own technology," Waymo said in a San Francisco federal court filing.

The suit contends that a Waymo manager took technical data with him when he left to launch a competing venture that went on to become Otto.