GoCatch unearths Uber’s secret emails as it seeks millions in damages

A now defunct rideshare business which once landed backing from James Packer has exposed internal Uber emails where executives shared their plans to ‘crush’ Australian rivals.

Internal Uber emails where executives shared their plans to ‘crush’ Australian rivals have been aired in the first day of a major court case. Picture: AFP

A former Uber Australia boss once listed his relationships with politicians and his infiltration of local competitors to build his case in an end-of-year performance review, a Melbourne court has heard.

The year was 2013 and David Rohrsheim, then chief executive of Uber Australia, had been asked to rate his “super pumpedness”, “innovation” and “fierceness”.

According to documents read in the Supreme Court of Victoria on Tuesday, Mr Rohrsheim had befriended a number of influential people which he believed would help the company “hurt” its competition.

“Infiltrated Taxi, limo databases to recruit hundreds of drivers. (I won’t put these details in writing, but happy to chat),” he had written in the review, according to evidence.

Under a section where Uber staff were required to rate their “fierceness”, Mr Rohrsheim wrote: “I detest our competitors and have built relationships with investors, politicians and potential employees to hurt their development. Deluxe and Dash who beat us to market have been destroyed. GoCatch is next.”

Former James Packer-backed GoCatch is seeking hundreds of millions in damages against Uber, which it claims did everything in its power to kill its business between 2012 and 2014.

Those claims include allegations of misconduct, corporate espionage, hacking of competitor systems and knowingly launching Uber X illegally in Australia without regulatory approval.

Tuesday was the first day of the trial, and GoCatch’s opening argument unveiled a number of internal emails between Uber executives both in Australia and abroad which spoke of the company’s plans to “crush” its rivals.

But Uber, which is yet to provide evidence before the court, believes it should bear no responsibility for the failing of other businesses.

“Uber firmly rejects any suggestion that we should be liable for the failure of other P2P businesses to adapt to an emerging competitive landscape. We will vigorously defend the matter in court,” a spokeswoman told The Australian.

Uber “is a fundamentally different business today than we were a decade ago” she said, adding that the company has made “significant changes to our leadership and how we conduct business, taking seriously our responsibility to be a collaborative, contributing industry leader.”

But internal emails read before the court suggest otherwise, Michael Hodge KC, who is representing GoCatch, has attempted to prove in the case’s opening.

“In our submission, as we keep coming back to, is the unavoidable conclusion that in launching Uber X, they are intending it as an attack amongst other things on GoCatch,” he said.

Former Uber Australia boss Mr Rohrsheim was a key person in opening evidence, and in one email he sent to Uber’s then Asia boss Allen Penn in early September 2013, he wrote of GoCatch: “I want to destroy them before they get too legit. Keen to explore ‘next level’ marketing and PR options.”

At the time, GoCatch had signed 6000 drivers in Sydney in June while Uber had signed just 4000, which Mr Rohrsheim admitted had him “freaking out”.

In that same email, sent at 10.32pm at night, Mr Rohrsheim had bragged of using software to receive the personal contact numbers of GoCatch drivers.

“I just got my hands on something game changing – phone numbers for all GoCatch drivers. Haven’t decided how to use that. Don’t want them to know,” it read.

Just a few weeks later, Mr Rohrsheim appeared to have found a way, having admitted in another email to Mr Penn he was now cold calling GoCatch drivers with the contact numbers he had obtained.

“I got my hands on a list of all GoCatch driver phone numbers. We are aggressively cold calling (without disclosing how we got their number) and won 56 of their drivers,” he wrote.

One month earlier, Uber’s head of recruitment in Asia, who appeared to have shared similar resentment toward GoCatch, had emailed Mr Penn: “Go Catch is *the* reason we’re launching taxis in Sydney. F..k those guys.”

Mr Hodge KC said Uber had put “a lot of emphasis” on the idea that Uber now is different to the company it was in 2014 and that it believed since GoCatch could not show its drivers had provided their contact numbers “in confidence” that it was not immoral to obtain them.

“Can I put it in an even more colloquial way? The submission being made by Uber is that if you leave your house door unlocked and a thief breaks in and steals all of your possessions then nevertheless, they haven’t actually stolen anything because you left your door unlocked.”

Originally published as GoCatch unearths Uber’s secret emails as it seeks millions in damages