4 ms·

> Federal prosecutors are also seeking three years of supervised release and an agreed-upon restitution payment of nearly $756,500 to Alphabet Inc’s self-drivin

> Federal prosecutors are also seeking three years of supervised release and an agreed-upon restitution payment of nearly $756,500 to Alphabet Inc’s self-driving car company Waymo > Levandowski filed for bankruptcy protection in March, shortly after a court confirmed that he must pay $179 million to Google to end a legal battle over his split from the Alphabet Inc unit. I see is guilty of a few things, but the size of the fines seems astronomical. Does the scope of his crime justify this punishment?

iaw 6y ago
They had previously paid him $120M so it seems like it's actually in the same ballpark of transaction size.
sadfev 6y ago
No, it was blatant theft of IP and some might consider corporate espionage. He was a high level exec at Waymo, who stole the IP which represented the core competency just before he jumped ship to Uber.
- qppo 6y ago
  > some might consider corporate espionage I don't know about "consider," he plead guilty to theft of trade secrets and was charged with crimes defined by the Economic Espionage Act. But I think most engineers don't know that stealing IP from your former employer is a federal crime punishable up to 10 years.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Almost all engineers should at least know that doing so is wrong. And this guy was an executive, not just an engineer.
    - qppo 6y ago
      I'm not suggesting that it's an excuse or that engineers don't know it's wrong, just that I'm guessing most of them don't know they can go to jail for pulling this shit. It's kind of like what happened with Aaron Schwartz (where the ethics of what he did might be more debatable than Levandowski). I don't think either of these smart people realized what they were doing could put them in prison.
bronson 6y ago
If the proceeds from the crime are astronomical, then the fine should probably be astronomical too: https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/turns-out-uber-got-otto-on-the-cheap https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/sel...

iaw 6y ago

They had previously paid him $120M so it seems like it's actually in the same ballpark of transaction size.

sadfev 6y ago

No, it was blatant theft of IP and some might consider corporate espionage. He was a high level exec at Waymo, who stole the IP which represented the core competency just before he jumped ship to Uber.

qppo 6y ago
> some might consider corporate espionage I don't know about "consider," he plead guilty to theft of trade secrets and was charged with crimes defined by the Economic Espionage Act. But I think most engineers don't know that stealing IP from your former employer is a federal crime punishable up to 10 years.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Almost all engineers should at least know that doing so is wrong. And this guy was an executive, not just an engineer.
  - qppo 6y ago
    I'm not suggesting that it's an excuse or that engineers don't know it's wrong, just that I'm guessing most of them don't know they can go to jail for pulling this shit. It's kind of like what happened with Aaron Schwartz (where the ethics of what he did might be more debatable than Levandowski). I don't think either of these smart people realized what they were doing could put them in prison.

bronson 6y ago

If the proceeds from the crime are astronomical, then the fine should probably be astronomical too: https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/turns-out-uber-got-otto-on-the-cheap https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/sel...