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Nobody yet has mentioned the big picture. To me the big queston is: How the fuck do Levandowski and Kalanick still have jobs at Uber? If I were on the Uber Boa

Nobody yet has mentioned the big picture. To me the big queston is: How the fuck do Levandowski and Kalanick still have jobs at Uber? If I were on the Uber Board of Directors, I would be pushing for armed security to escort those two clowns out the door. Immediately. As in today. And I'd give them a cardboard box with all their personal shit in it for them to carry out with them. At what point in time does a company Director become complicit in theft of IP? What did the Uber board know, and when did they know it? I predict that, any day now, there will be mass scurrying of rats abandoning a sinking ship. All IMO of course. As they say on the TV show Cops (more or less): all suspects are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

titanomachy 10y ago
Uber's position is that Google's claims are baseless and Levandowski did not use stolen IP to build his autonomous vehicle. Firing him would would severely undermine those claims. And yeah, it seems like that's probably not true, but it's the position they've decided to take. We don't know for sure that it's just Kalanick pushing that story; the board could be complicit.
tgjsrkghruksd 10y ago
I'd probably have security go through their "personal shit" especially any storage media too, given the background.
apsec112 10y ago
I think Kalanick has a majority of Uber's voting shares, so neither the board nor anyone else can force him to leave. Likewise, if Kalanick wants Levandowski to stay, he stays.
- PhantomGremlin 10y ago
  I don't think that works if there is truly criminal culpability here. If you're on the Board of Directors you can fire the clown or you can let him vote you off the board. You don't get to say: I can't do anything because he's the majority shareholder.
  - kooshball 10y ago
    How do you fire any one as a board member? Your only input is the vote and if the CEO control the majority of votes, your vote is meaningless.
    - MertsA 10y ago
      It's not always that simple though. Kalanick can't just do whatever he wants with no fear of other shareholders intervening. See Dodge v. Ford: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
  - notyourwork 10y ago
    I believe you actually do. Sure you can ask nicely but he has voting control of the company so until proven guilty what more can the board do?
tannhauser23 10y ago
Because if you fire them they will turn against you. They are your employees, and their wrongdoong will be attributed to you. They might very well agree to testify against you, civilly or criminally, in exchange for the suit being dropped. But if you keep them on the payroll (and often pay their lawyers) you can create a common front and limit their ability to 'go rogue' and harm you. The reckoning can come after the suit's settled.
DannyBee 10y ago
"Nobody yet has mentioned the big picture. To me the big queston is: How the fuck do Levandowski and Kalanick still have jobs at Uber? " It would damage their claim that nothing bad happened. You also assume this isn't a deliberate strategy on the part of the lawyers: See if they can avoid discovery by having him claim the fifth, while not firing him/etc for doing it. You can hold the fact that someone claimed the fifth against them in a civil lawsuit. Uber could just be betting that the consequences of this strategy are better than the documents that would get released.
eddieplan9 10y ago
You need to read up on Levandowski a little bit. To quote a Bloomberg article: > “Whatever Google may say about him stealing lidar trade secrets, he was the lidar team at Google,” says someone who worked at the company’s driverless car program. “This is like the Swiss patent office suing Einstein for inventing the theory of relativity while he worked there.” > Google’s self-driving car project began the following year with ... hardware supplied by Anthony’s Robots. Like 510 Systems, Anthony’s Robots was operated as an independent company. The arrangement—whereby Levandowski was at once a founding member of the Google self-driving car team and a vendor who was also selling technology to other companies—was well-known to Google executives, though it was never publicly disclosed. “Anthony is a rogue force of nature,” says a former Google self-driving car executive. “Each phase of his Google career he had a separate company doing exactly the same work.” According to two former Google employees, founders Page and Sergey Brin tolerated Levandowski’s freelancing because they saw it as the fastest way to make progress. Google’s car team embraced Levandowski’s nature, too. The attitude, says a former colleague, was “he’s an asshole, but he’s our asshole.” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-16/fury-road-did-uber-steal-the-driverless-future-from-google https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-16/fury-road...
- objclxt 10y ago
  > “This is like the Swiss patent office suing Einstein for inventing the theory of relativity while he worked there.” says someone who worked at the company’s driverless car program Well, the Swiss patent office wasn't paying Einstein to come up with the theory of relativity, whereas I'm pretty sure Google were paying for LIDAR innovations. I hope that anonymous source's code has fewer leaps of logic than that analogy...
- notatoad 10y ago
  Per that article, Google bought both 510 Systems and Anthony's Robots. So regardless of if he invented the IP in question during his work for google or for his own companies, it's owned by Google. Whatever sketchy subcontractor arragement was in place all seems to be moot.
- michaelt 10y ago
  “Anthony is a rogue force of nature,” says a former Google self-driving car executive. “Each phase of his Google career he had a separate company doing exactly the same work.” Shit like this is why so many companies insist on blanket IP assignment clauses in developers' contracts.

titanomachy 10y ago

Uber's position is that Google's claims are baseless and Levandowski did not use stolen IP to build his autonomous vehicle. Firing him would would severely undermine those claims. And yeah, it seems like that's probably not true, but it's the position they've decided to take. We don't know for sure that it's just Kalanick pushing that story; the board could be complicit.

tgjsrkghruksd 10y ago

I'd probably have security go through their "personal shit" especially any storage media too, given the background.

apsec112 10y ago

I think Kalanick has a majority of Uber's voting shares, so neither the board nor anyone else can force him to leave. Likewise, if Kalanick wants Levandowski to stay, he stays.

PhantomGremlin 10y ago
I don't think that works if there is truly criminal culpability here. If you're on the Board of Directors you can fire the clown or you can let him vote you off the board. You don't get to say: I can't do anything because he's the majority shareholder.
- kooshball 10y ago
  How do you fire any one as a board member? Your only input is the vote and if the CEO control the majority of votes, your vote is meaningless.
  - MertsA 10y ago
    It's not always that simple though. Kalanick can't just do whatever he wants with no fear of other shareholders intervening. See Dodge v. Ford: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
- notyourwork 10y ago
  I believe you actually do. Sure you can ask nicely but he has voting control of the company so until proven guilty what more can the board do?

tannhauser23 10y ago

Because if you fire them they will turn against you. They are your employees, and their wrongdoong will be attributed to you. They might very well agree to testify against you, civilly or criminally, in exchange for the suit being dropped. But if you keep them on the payroll (and often pay their lawyers) you can create a common front and limit their ability to 'go rogue' and harm you. The reckoning can come after the suit's settled.

DannyBee 10y ago

"Nobody yet has mentioned the big picture. To me the big queston is: How the fuck do Levandowski and Kalanick still have jobs at Uber? " It would damage their claim that nothing bad happened. You also assume this isn't a deliberate strategy on the part of the lawyers: See if they can avoid discovery by having him claim the fifth, while not firing him/etc for doing it. You can hold the fact that someone claimed the fifth against them in a civil lawsuit. Uber could just be betting that the consequences of this strategy are better than the documents that would get released.

eddieplan9 10y ago

You need to read up on Levandowski a little bit. To quote a Bloomberg article: > “Whatever Google may say about him stealing lidar trade secrets, he was the lidar team at Google,” says someone who worked at the company’s driverless car program. “This is like the Swiss patent office suing Einstein for inventing the theory of relativity while he worked there.” > Google’s self-driving car project began the following year with ... hardware supplied by Anthony’s Robots. Like 510 Systems, Anthony’s Robots was operated as an independent company. The arrangement—whereby Levandowski was at once a founding member of the Google self-driving car team and a vendor who was also selling technology to other companies—was well-known to Google executives, though it was never publicly disclosed. “Anthony is a rogue force of nature,” says a former Google self-driving car executive. “Each phase of his Google career he had a separate company doing exactly the same work.” According to two former Google employees, founders Page and Sergey Brin tolerated Levandowski’s freelancing because they saw it as the fastest way to make progress. Google’s car team embraced Levandowski’s nature, too. The attitude, says a former colleague, was “he’s an asshole, but he’s our asshole.” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-16/fury-road-did-uber-steal-the-driverless-future-from-google https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-16/fury-road...

objclxt 10y ago
> “This is like the Swiss patent office suing Einstein for inventing the theory of relativity while he worked there.” says someone who worked at the company’s driverless car program Well, the Swiss patent office wasn't paying Einstein to come up with the theory of relativity, whereas I'm pretty sure Google were paying for LIDAR innovations. I hope that anonymous source's code has fewer leaps of logic than that analogy...
notatoad 10y ago
Per that article, Google bought both 510 Systems and Anthony's Robots. So regardless of if he invented the IP in question during his work for google or for his own companies, it's owned by Google. Whatever sketchy subcontractor arragement was in place all seems to be moot.
michaelt 10y ago
“Anthony is a rogue force of nature,” says a former Google self-driving car executive. “Each phase of his Google career he had a separate company doing exactly the same work.” Shit like this is why so many companies insist on blanket IP assignment clauses in developers' contracts.