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Can someone explain the difference between this situation and the following situation: - engineer at Company A has expertise in a certain field, and is really,

Can someone explain the difference between this situation and the following situation: - engineer at Company A has expertise in a certain field, and is really, really good at solving problems in this field and knowing what to do next at any point in time. They bring quality to Company A's systems. - engineer moves to Company B to do the same kind of work, and uses their expertise to bring Company B's systems up to high quality as well - Company A says that this engineer must have stolen trade secrets.

tdb7893 7y ago
He was caught with actual documents and designs. He took more than just his expertise from his previous employer.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Traster 7y ago
In this case the engineer literally downloaded proprietary files and took them with. You're welcome to take your intelligence and experience with you, you're not welcome to take the work product that the company you're leaving was literally paying hundreds of millions for.
greenyoda 7y ago
"Must have stolen trade secrets" won't stand up in court. They'd have to enumerate which specific trade secrets were allegedly stolen, prove that they were indeed trade secrets and not something that lots of senior engineers could figure out on their own, etc. Levandowski was charged with stealing specific files and designs, not trade secrets in general.
nwsm 7y ago
Read the article and you'll know the difference.
deleted_account 7y ago
The indictment[1] sheds some light on the difference: "On or about December 11,2015, he downloaded approximately 14,000 files from SVN. These files contained critical engineering information about the hardware used on Project Chauffeur self-driving vehicles, including schematics for the printed circuit boards used in various custom LiDAR products." In other words, the accusation is that he stole technology that was the output of the entire Project Chauffeur team, not simply stuff of his own creation. Presumably, those materials were non-trivial and represent the combined effort of many engineers over many years. Imagine you're toiling on a team for years and your absurdly compensated boss decides they want the whole pie, clones the repo their laptop, and dips out to found their own start up based on everyone's work. [1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/press-release/file/1197991/download https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/press-release/file/1197991...
- greenyoda 7y ago
  > In other words, the accusation is that he stole technology that was the output of the entire Project Chauffeur team, not simply stuff of his own creation. Even "stuff of his own creation" that he created for Google while an employee there would be Google's intellectual property (assuming the usual terms of employment), and if he took it with him after leaving, it would still be theft.

tdb7893 7y ago

He was caught with actual documents and designs. He took more than just his expertise from his previous employer.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Traster 7y ago

In this case the engineer literally downloaded proprietary files and took them with. You're welcome to take your intelligence and experience with you, you're not welcome to take the work product that the company you're leaving was literally paying hundreds of millions for.

greenyoda 7y ago

"Must have stolen trade secrets" won't stand up in court. They'd have to enumerate which specific trade secrets were allegedly stolen, prove that they were indeed trade secrets and not something that lots of senior engineers could figure out on their own, etc. Levandowski was charged with stealing specific files and designs, not trade secrets in general.

nwsm 7y ago

Read the article and you'll know the difference.

deleted_account 7y ago

The indictment[1] sheds some light on the difference: "On or about December 11,2015, he downloaded approximately 14,000 files from SVN. These files contained critical engineering information about the hardware used on Project Chauffeur self-driving vehicles, including schematics for the printed circuit boards used in various custom LiDAR products." In other words, the accusation is that he stole technology that was the output of the entire Project Chauffeur team, not simply stuff of his own creation. Presumably, those materials were non-trivial and represent the combined effort of many engineers over many years. Imagine you're toiling on a team for years and your absurdly compensated boss decides they want the whole pie, clones the repo their laptop, and dips out to found their own start up based on everyone's work. [1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/press-release/file/1197991/download https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/press-release/file/1197991...

greenyoda 7y ago
> In other words, the accusation is that he stole technology that was the output of the entire Project Chauffeur team, not simply stuff of his own creation. Even "stuff of his own creation" that he created for Google while an employee there would be Google's intellectual property (assuming the usual terms of employment), and if he took it with him after leaving, it would still be theft.