From Uber to Prison: The downfall of ex-Google engineer Anthony Levandowski

Autonomous driving engineer Anthony Levandowski has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for trade theft. He allegedly stole trade secrets from Google as he defected to Uber Technologies Inc, with the case becoming a high profile criminal case in Silicon Valley. Levandowski was working with Alphabet Inc. for the driverless-car unit, Waymo.

'Theft of Intellectual Property'

As per US media, Anthony Levandowski was a founding member of Google's self-driving car assignment. He left the company in 2016 but before he left he allegedly took nearly 10 GB confidential files with him. He copied data that contained the blueprints, testing documents and design files among other things onto his personal laptop before he left the firm.

After leaving Waymo, Levandowski started working with Uber as a part of their robocar project. Uber Technologies Inc. allegedly profited from this move but Anthony Levandowski was fired by the company in 2017 due to this high profile case. After being fired from Uber he started a second company of his own, an autonomous trucking company called Pronto. Previously he owned a company named Otto which was acquired by Uber Technologies Inc. before he was hired by them, as per reports in US media.

According to the law, Levandowski had no right to the information that he stole from Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc. as they were the rightful owner of that data. Alphabet Inc. also filed a case against Uber Technologies Inc. because of the profit they allegedly made from the stolen data. Later on both the companies settled the case in 2018 after Uber agreed to pay Google 0.34% of its equity which was about $245 million. Google also went on to file a case against Anthony Levandowski for the trade secret theft and he was charged with 33 counts out of which he pleaded guilty for one. The learned judge presiding over the case said that this was one of the biggest trade secret crime that he has ever come across. He then instructed Levandowski to pay $179 Million in damages to Alphabet Inc.

A Bankrupt Convicted Felon

Levandowski ended up spending a few years in fighting legal battles. He received a punishment to pay $179 Million to Google for the $120 Million that the company spent on him as well as the damages. Anthony Levandowski had to file for bankruptcy soon after the judgment was passed which led to the 18 months prison sentence. He also requested the court for home confinement due to the surge in COVID-19 cases in the prison. He claimed that he has suffered from pneumonia in the past that put him at a higher risk of contracting coronavirus which could amount to a 'death sentence'. The presiding judge ruled that Levandowski could start his custodial sentence after the coronavirus cases in the prison were wiped away. As per the US media reports, the judge also said that a non-custodial sentence would not be deterrent enough to prevent people from stealing trade secrets. 

(With inputs from agencies)