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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 li
by 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 agoPer 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.