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Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google
- philshem 7y agoSome backstory (2018) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/did-uber-steal-googles-intellectual-property https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/did-uber-steal...
- 0xcafecafe 7y agoGood read. This made me chuckle "Even the Levandowskis’ nanny assumed a minor role in the drama, when she filed a multimillion-dollar suit of her own, claiming that Anthony had been emotionally abusive to her, and that he had a drawer that was filled with sex toys. (The lawsuit, which offered no evidence of her claims and contained multiple factual errors, was eventually dropped.)"
- bogomipz 7y ago>"However, Levandowski personally filed today for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, stating that the presumptive $179M debt quite exceeds his assets, which he estimates at somewhere between $50M and $100M." Could someone with a legal background say what this means in practical terms? Stating you have assets worth "between $50M and $100M" while declaring bankruptcy obviously looks absurd on it's face but I'm guessing there's much more to this?
- emiliobumachar 7y agoI have nowhere close to a legal background, but I think I understand what's going on here. First, there's zero incentives for him to be precise. If the upper bound is far below his debts, he'll end up with zero regardless of whether he owns 50M or 100M or 150M. There are incentives for him to be right. Putting incorrect numbers in a legal document is a faux pass at best, and at worse can be assumed to be malicious.
- Mvandenbergh 7y agoWell, $100M is a lot less than $197M. Bankruptcy doesn't mean "out of money" it means that you have debts that you have no way of paying. I would expect a bankruptcy court to force him to liquidate almost all of that $100M to pay the judgement. I don't know if an arbitration judgement like this can be discharged through bankruptcy, some judgements and penalties cannot.
- lokar 7y agoAlso, he probably has other debts, and this process will sort out who gets what (since not everyone can get the full amount they are owed).
- ewidar 7y agoI don't get your question. He is asked to pay $179M, he "only" has between $50M and $100M, hence he is technically bankrupt.
- TheCondor 7y agoThere are provisions in some places as to what can be taken by bankruptcy. Then there are laws about what debts can be wiped out by bankruptcy. I suspect it’s a more general question, will he be broke after this with a crappy reputation and no money or will he be “broke” and live in a multimillion dollar castle with a support staff and get around in last year’s S-class rather than this year’s hotness?
- bogomipz 7y agoYes it was more of a general question, exactly what you articulated in your last sentence. Thanks.
- martin_a 7y agoOutline link for anyone who is not willing to fight with techcrunchs cookie monster. https://outline.com/Lpu8GE https://outline.com/Lpu8GE
- dijksterhuis 7y agoFailing to load for me on iOS...? Can’t stand the TechCrunch Cookie Monster.
- martin_a 7y agoHm, sorry, works on my Desktop with Firefox. Ah, take the text, it's not that long: --- Anthony Levandowski, the engineer and autonomous vehicle startup founder who was at the center of a trade secrets lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, has been ordered to pay $179 million to end a contract dispute over his departure from Google. Reuters was the first to report the court order. An arbitration panel ruled in December that Levandowski and Lior Ron had engaged in unfair competition and breached their contract with Google when they left the company to start a rival autonomous vehicle company focused on trucking, called Otto. Uber acquired Otto in 2017. A San Francisco County court confirmed Wednesday the panel’s decision. Ron settled last month with Google for $9.7 million. However, Levandowski, had disputed the ruling. The San Francisco County Superior Court denied his petition today, granting Google’s petition to hold Levandowski to the arbitration agreement under which he was liable. Levandowski himself may not have to pay the money personally, as this sort of liability may fall to his employer depending on his contract or other legal quirks. However, Levandowski personally filed today for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, stating that the presumptive $179M debt quite exceeds his assets, which he estimates at somewhere between $50M and $100M. A representative for Levandowski declined comment for this story. Devin Coldewey contributed to this story.
- dijksterhuis 7y agoThanks!
- GoblinSlayer 7y agoImagine running arbitrary javascript received from the network.
- misiti3780 7y agoI obviously can do the math, but is there anyway this guy is not financially completely ruined now? I kinda always assume when you get into the 100M+ range, you can fuck up but still not go to zero (aka you have houses, cars, land etc that google can claw back)
- xxcode 7y agoPeanuts
- bagacrap 7y agoI'd happily take some peanuts if you have any to spare
- xxcode 7y agoHe can easily get a job that pays 10M a year
- zsandwich 7y agoWhat the case was about is employee mobility, competition, and the onerous employee agreements with secretive and punitive arbitration clauses that Big Tech forces their employees to sign. So yes, Anthony may have lost his case but that’s because all employees - especially high prized ones like him - are forced into these agreements and play on an uneven playing field. Thankfully there have been recent improvements in easing these when it comes to sexual harrasment, of which Google is a major violator and leading example, but don’t kid yourself the problem is not solved. In all other respects all tech workers are subject to these super stringent employment terms and secretive arbitrations controlled by the tech giants. And if they can try and destroy a big deal employee like Anthony like this, what hope is there for the average tech worker.
- joshuamorton 7y agoWhat? This has nothing to do with arbitration. Levandowski was sued for IP theft (and faces criminal charges for the same)
- nobbis 7y agoGoogle's SDC efforts are rooted in Anthony's work: he helped kickstart the entire industry. Mark Harris broke the story here: https://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/artificial-intelligence/the-unknown-startup-that-built-googles-first-selfdriving-car https://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/artificial-intelligence/t... I don't know what IP is in question, but it seems to me that he had been working in AVs longer than almost anyone in the industry, so it's believable that Uber was valuing the Otto team's accumulated experience, rather than any stolen ideas.
- tassl 7y agoThis is completely misleading. Even if his first company was the first self driving vehicle project ever (which was not) or the only piece in the puzzle (which it wasn't either), there were other cofounders of that startup. This is glorifying one person using other people's work.
- nobbis 7y agoIt was the first self-driving car project to cause established companies to take notice and start investing heavily, kickstarting the industry, which was my point. Other co-founders, yes, but Anthony was overall product lead. The article goes into detail.
- person_of_color 7y agoI can't believe he made that much as an individual contributor at Google. #goals.
- justicezyx 7y agoI call this justice well served.
- atonse 7y agoOnly if he actually has to pay.
- dereksine 7y ago..."Levandowski himself may not have to pay the money personally, as this sort of liability may fall to his employer depending on his contract or other legal quirks."
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y agoYou can see immediately below that he personally filed for bankruptcy. Now when rich people do this it doesn't always mean the same thing as when ordinary people do it, but it seems unlikely that he would need to take that step if he had no liability.
- dereksine 7y agoChapter 11 buys more time. Don't forget he still has criminal charges pending: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-uber-self-driving-car-executive-indicted-alleged-theft-trade-secrets-google?mod=article_inline https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-uber-self-drivin...
- zanek 7y agoLevandowski just filed for bankruptcy saying he has less than $100M in assets . Does anyone know if he will only pay a percentage or is only delaying this by kicking the can down the road to another court ? I would be highly surprised if his employer (Uber) shouldered any of the this
- pmorici 7y agoMy layman's understanding is it depends on the underlying reason for the legal judgment. When fraud was involved it is supposedly harder to discharge a judgement in bankruptcy.
- whoisjuan 7y agoUber is not his employer a long time ago. They fired him precisely to stay out of this dispute.
- refurb 7y agoI don’t believe that court orders for restitution are discharge Le through bankruptcy.
- ineedasername 7y agoAnd bankruptcy doesn't actually discharge the debt if you have assets-- it just gives you breathing room and a formal legal structure to work with creditors on just what % is possible, who gets paid first, second, etc.
- tomerico 7y agoI wonder how he doesn't have more assets after he sold his company to Uber for $680 millions
- manigandham 7y agoMost founders make nowhere near the actual sale price for a VC-funded company, and Otto had 4 co-founders.
- 7y ago
- markdown 7y ago> Ron settled last month with Google for $9.7 million. Smart guy.
- zsandwich 7y agoHe works for Uber. They paid his bill.
- jjeaff 7y agoSo did lewendowski when the event in question took place. They are technically on the hook for his too but they will definitely try to argue that since an actual crime took place, their indemnity only goes so far. And I'm sure there is some language to that effect in their policies as well.
- umeshunni 7y agoUber paid that. As mentioned in the Reuters article - Waymo confirmed that Uber had paid the $9.7 million owed by Ron, as Uber indemnifies workers under its employment agreements. But Uber had said in financial filings that it expects to challenge paying for Levandowski, who is fighting a federal indictment on charges of stealing trade secrets from Google.
- tozeur 7y agoA friend of mine heard his personal attorney speak at a law school class. Even his attorney thought Anthony was a “jackass” for stealing the IP; his defense fell on him being an engineer who, at the end of the day, just wanted to build cool shit and wasn’t malicious.
- swiley 7y agoI feel like this stuff should be public anyway, we’ve already had one person die over a company using “IP” to keep secrets. Maybe what he did was wrong but I don’t like calling him a “jackass.”
- duxup 7y agoMaybe not malicious but what he walked away with wasn't just Google's IP, I'm sure plenty of people working for / with him worked on that IP too... There is a certain amount of disregard for other people who want to make cool stuff too IMO.
- Nelson69 7y agoHe's cashed in on this theft to the tune of "$50m-$100m" what would it take to constitute mallace? Sure, he's not building war weapons or anything like that, but he stole the IP and he made an F* ton of money from it, specifically selling it to competitors. That seems like about the only malicious thing you could do with that IP, if you ask me. Being not malicious would be if it did that for free. What are the odds that he ends up living kind of normal after this? Like living in the suburbs in a 2500sqft house and commuting to some job that pays $130k? I think close to nil.
- zimpenfish 7y ago> commuting to some job That'd be some interview. "Could you tell us about a time when you had to resolve a difficult issue? Say when you nicked IP from Google and had to pay $179M as restitution? And could you then explain why we should trust you within a hundred miles of our IP?"
- deleted 7y ago
- maerF0x0 7y agoSeems out of proportion given 1) Google was willing to settle for <$10M with Ron and 2) Equifax only paid ~2x for leaking pretty much 50% of the SSNs in the country[1]... [1]:https://threatpost.com/equifax-settles-class-action-lawsuit/151873/ https://threatpost.com/equifax-settles-class-action-lawsuit/...
- p1necone 7y agoWhen the fine is already > than his net worth does it make sense to increase it further? The actual impact on him won't change, and no more money will actually be recovered.
- smallgovt 7y agoYou can garnish future wages. That said, if he actually has <100M in assets, I also think that seems over-bearing.
- projektfu 7y agoThe difference is that Lewandowski realized the value of the IP with the sale of the company. If the jury decides trade secrets made up x% of the company, he owes that percent of his proceeds. IMO, IANAL.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y agoArbitration panel, in this case. The real answer is that the legal system is not set up to keep a globally consistent harm_done->liability map. For one thing, the contents of employment contracts may lead to different damages in otherwise identical circumstances. For another thing, even if the circumstances were identical, it would be inefficient for justices to have to search every other possible case to make sure they are consistent with each other one. The law is a fuzzy rule system, not a perfect logical construct.
- projektfu 7y agoTrue, it shows that even highly valuable employees are Davids (or Sauls) against a corporate Goliath.
- mlthoughts2018 7y agoGoogle has to get the Andy Rubin money back somehow.
- arthurcolle 7y agoAndy Rubin might be a creep but at least he didn’t steal intellectual property.
- draw_down 7y agoGood grief, what a thing to say.
- _jal 7y agoI rate abusing one's power over other people as significantly worse than improper secret management.
- rirarobo 7y agoAgreed. However, "improper secret management" does not accurately describe Levandowski's actions, and one could argue that he did abuse his power at the expense of others.
- arthurcolle 7y agoYeah that's a super charitable description. Stealing bitcoin private keys and then using them to kickstart your own venture? "Improper secrets management"
- _jal 7y agoI was being a bit tongue-in-cheek, but also should know better than to try.
- arthurcolle 7y agoTheft to me is loss of wealth to the victim. Saying "hey lets hook up or you won't get that promotion" is also loss of wealth and personal embarrassment so to me it's roughly equal with a bit of a bias against Rubin. But they acquired Android and he probably had some deep legalese and contracts preserving his golden parachute, can't really claw those back unless some really bad news comes out. Sorry if this seems completely wacko to you but that's how I see it. Both are ugly.
- xrd 7y agoIt's been amusing to hear his story. Starting a church/religion was my favorite part. I bet Google and a bunch of other companies are excited about the message this sends to other arrogant engineers who might be considering leaving and building new companies with ideas developed at their prior places of employment. That precedent is worth billions if not trillions.
- anrmq7 7y agoThis is harmful to innovation in the Bay Area. Big Tech eats up all the talent and now sends the signal that they can’t leave. The trial hasn’t even begun for this case - I think they’re still debating what constitutes a trade secret. This seems personal. Google got angry that one of their “own” went to a competitor. I bet this will make companies think twice about acquiring startups founded by Google employees.
- jasonvorhe 7y agoJust don't copy privileged/proprietary data/code and you'll be fine.
- xrd 7y agoTotally agree. That exactly what I'm saying too.
- freepor 7y agoYou can leave any time you like, just don’t literally take files with you.
- dodobirdlord 7y ago> This seems personal. Google got angry that one of their “own” went to a competitor. He literally copied gigabytes of work onto hard drives and stole them.
- paxys 7y ago"building new companies with ideas developed at their prior places of employment" is VERY different from copying files and stealing IP. The former is the reason Silicon Valley is what it is today.
- CalChris 7y agoI’m not a Levandowski fan (although he was a brilliant engineer) but Travis Kalanick should probably write half that check.
- agoodthrowaway 7y agoI am not sure I would call him a brilliant engineer if he had to steal designs from Google.
- eigenvalue 7y agoIt was his team at Google that made the designs in the first place...
- agoodthrowaway 7y agoMeh. What commercial product has the guy ever released? I’ve been involved in many and I can tell you that with each one of them I knew exactly what I would do differently the next time. I didn’t need an old design because I knew what we needed to do without having to refer to the old design. If this guy was so brilliant he wouldn’t have stolen because he’d have known how to make the design better. Rather I think he stole the designs for expediency out of greed.
- rockinghigh 7y agoUber already paid $245 million to Google.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- brutopia 7y agoBit unrelated, but could somebody highlight the comma splices mentioned in the comments section? As a non-native english speaker, I can’t notice anything out of the ordinary.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mrosett 7y agoThe only clear error was this sentence: > However, Levandowski, had disputed the ruling. The second comma is unneeded. It’s not a comma splice though. There are some really long sentences with awkward commas, but I believe they’re grammatically correct. It would just be better to break them into multiple sentences.
- angry_octet 7y agoIt's like reading (a method (like an algorithm (after the scholar Al-Khwarizmi) of communication, but see [2]), except maybe the braces don't quite match).
- archeantus 7y ago“ However, Levandowski personally filed today for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, stating that the presumptive $179M debt quite exceeds his assets, which he estimates at somewhere between $50M and $100M.” I’m not an English expert, but I am a native speaker. Although the above sentence is understandable, when you look at it closer the sentence structure is a bit wonky. Anecdotally, I don’t like starting a sentence with “However,”, and this article has that twice. I think it is that kind of style where the author is making a statement and then forcing you to hold it in memory, so to speak, is what the commenter is referring to. It gets mentally taxing to keep track of all of the threads.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoSecond comma could have been a - eg "assets - which he" But I agree that there is nothing wrong with that sentence.
- innagadadavida 7y agoAre ML model parameters copyrightable? Should it be? To me, it looks like that is the only claim google has - rest of the algorithms are all open sourced already. Honestly, I don’t see much difference between this and the oracle java case. Google can’t have it both ways.
- KarlKemp 7y agoThis case involved technology that even hardcore critics of intellectual property rights would presumably consider "classic" patents. The LIDAR hardware was one of the major items, IIRC. I don't remember anything about ML and especially not model parameters. But, yes, I'm somewhat sure those would meet the criteria for copyright. What's far more interesting is the copyright status of the output of ML models: does it meet the required "creativity" when it's just the product of a computation you set up once, a long time ago? And is the ML model's creator still close enough to the product to be considered its author? If your text generator was trained on Wikipedia data, are the wikipedia authors co-creators? This stuff is going to be fun...
- cjblomqvist 7y agoLet's not also forget trade secrets. You can just take secret information from one company to the next.
- waitwhatt 7y agoHe should stop stealing IP. That is China's job.
- imvetri 7y agoyep.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- KKKKkkkk1 7y agoIt feels perverse that when Uber's stolen technology killed a pedestrian, nobody was held liable and in fact no charges were pressed and no civil lawsuits were filed. But the person who stole that technology was indicted and is getting financially destroyed.
- jstewartmobile 7y agoperverse, yet not surprising
- throwaway_tech 7y ago>nobody was held liable and in fact no charges were pressed and no civil lawsuits were filed As noted below Uber settled (that typically means their insurer settled) so there is no need for a civil lawsuit. That is efficiency of the system and how the system is supposed to work. In other words you only bring a suit against the insured if the insurer wrongfully denies your claim, here the insurer paid up, so there is no need for a civil suit by the estate of the deceased against Uber. The criminal side of things is interesting...but for sake of argument lets say you were in an accident, further assume it was your fault, resulting in a fatality. Typically, unless there was a separate crime (e.g. DUI, drag racing, etc...) there will be no criminal charge, just a civil traffic ticket for the accident (in many jurisdictions there will be a specific charge/penalties for an accident resulting in a fatality, but that will still be a traffic ticket, meaning non-criminal). I am curious if the "driver" received a traffic ticket for the accident, my guess is he did, I can't imagine the responding officer(s) not issuing a traffic ticket for an accident much less one resulting in a fatality. Interestingly these traffic tickets for accidents with fatalities do usually carry a potential penalties that include suspension of the drivers license, so I do think the law will need to catch up with reality in that regard because suspending the driver's DL doesn't seem to punish the right party in the case of a self-driving car, so perhaps these states that allow self-driving cars need to think about adopting traffic laws specific to self-driving cars and figure out who those tickets should go to and the proper punishment (obviously you can't suspend the DL of a self-driving car or a car company).
- stephencanon 7y ago
- ryanjodonnell 7y agoGlad to know you can’t steal work from your employer and get away with it
- gregjw 7y agoOof.
- econcon 7y agoOne previous fraud man once told me when you acquire money through fraud, spend it all on powerful people who can reciprocate those favours later when all your assets are seized. They can confiscate the money/assets, can they stop the barters who of which they've no records?
- carapace 7y agoDon't coach people on criminal behaviour??