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>Google's suit is against Uber, not Levendowski, who could now spill beans on all sorts of unsuspected malfeasance. At this point what has he got to lose? If he

>Google's suit is against Uber, not Levendowski, who could now spill beans on all sorts of unsuspected malfeasance. At this point what has he got to lose? If he decides to cooperate with google things could get very interesting. Google's suit is against Uber, not Levendowski, because Uber has the capital to go after. I Am Not An IP Lawyer, but I'd guess that if Levendowski had substantial assets, he'd be named a party in the complaint. My guess is that this firing is mainly a move to improve Uber's political capital "Look we fired the bad apple". I'd assume Uber has probably figured out how to tie his interests into cooperating with him (to the detriment of exposing IP theft) though maybe granting him equity or some sort of financial incentive. Uber: Hey, we're really sorry that things didn't work out but "here's some equity for the time that you worked here" oh and by the way here's the estimated value of that equity if we win the lawsuit or don't win the law suit.

CardenB 9y ago
Source? AFAIK, the suit was against Uber because Google's employment agreement means that they can target the company rather than the employee, but not the actual employee.
xapata 9y ago
Google's employment contract with Levendowski specified that all disputes are resolved by arbitration rather than court.
- nicolewhite 9y ago
  Does that apply now that he's no longer an employee there?
  - joshuamorton 9y ago
    In short, yes. And there's currently an ongoing arbitration between Google and Levandowski separate from this suit.
georgespencer 9y ago
> My guess is that this firing is mainly a move to improve Uber's political capital "Look we fired the bad apple". I'd assume Uber has probably figured out how to tie his interests into cooperating with him (to the detriment of exposing IP theft) though maybe granting him equity or some sort of financial incentive. Uber is complying with a court order to do their utmost to compel him to cooperate and testify. This is not political and it's also possible that they still don't want him to testify either way but they have to be seen to do the "right thing" in the eyes of the court.

CardenB 9y ago

Source? AFAIK, the suit was against Uber because Google's employment agreement means that they can target the company rather than the employee, but not the actual employee.

xapata 9y ago

Google's employment contract with Levendowski specified that all disputes are resolved by arbitration rather than court.

nicolewhite 9y ago
Does that apply now that he's no longer an employee there?
- joshuamorton 9y ago
  In short, yes. And there's currently an ongoing arbitration between Google and Levandowski separate from this suit.

georgespencer 9y ago

> My guess is that this firing is mainly a move to improve Uber's political capital "Look we fired the bad apple". I'd assume Uber has probably figured out how to tie his interests into cooperating with him (to the detriment of exposing IP theft) though maybe granting him equity or some sort of financial incentive. Uber is complying with a court order to do their utmost to compel him to cooperate and testify. This is not political and it's also possible that they still don't want him to testify either way but they have to be seen to do the "right thing" in the eyes of the court.