Engineer At the Center of Waymo/Uber Legal Battle Declares Bankruptcy (arstechnica.com) 55
Anthony Levandowski, the controversial engineer at the center of the recent legal battle between Google's Waymo and Uber, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The move comes shortly after a California federal judge confirmed that Levandowski owed Waymo $179 million for theft of trade secrets. Ars Technica reports: Levandowski was an early member of Google's self-driving car team, earning tens of millions of dollars for his efforts. Then in early 2016, he left Google to co-found a self-driving startup called Otto. A few months later, Uber acquired Otto in a deal reportedly worth around $680 million. But a forensic investigation by Google revealed that Levandowski had taken thousands of confidential technical documents with him on his way out the door -- including schematics for Google's cutting-edge lidar technology. Google sued Levandowski and Uber for theft of trade secrets. Google and Uber settled their lawsuit in 2018, but Google's battle with Levandowski continued.
In December 2019, an arbitrator ruled that Levandowski and one of his colleagues -- ex-Googler and Otto co-founder Lior Ron -- had breached their legal obligations to the search giant. Ron has settled with Google for $9.7 million, TechCrunch reports. The arbitrator ruled that Levandowski owed Google $179 million. Reuters reports that a federal judge confirmed that ruling on Wednesday, triggering Levandowski's bankruptcy filing. In his bankruptcy filing, Levandowski says that he has fewer than $100 million in assets, while he owes between $100 million and $500 million to creditors -- presumably including the $179 million he owes to Waymo. However, Levandowski may still be able to get Uber to pay the damages on his behalf. Uber indemnified Levandowski when it hired him in 2016. However, Reuters notes that, in a regulatory filing, Uber said it expected to challenge paying Levandowski's nine-figure judgment.
In December 2019, an arbitrator ruled that Levandowski and one of his colleagues -- ex-Googler and Otto co-founder Lior Ron -- had breached their legal obligations to the search giant. Ron has settled with Google for $9.7 million, TechCrunch reports. The arbitrator ruled that Levandowski owed Google $179 million. Reuters reports that a federal judge confirmed that ruling on Wednesday, triggering Levandowski's bankruptcy filing. In his bankruptcy filing, Levandowski says that he has fewer than $100 million in assets, while he owes between $100 million and $500 million to creditors -- presumably including the $179 million he owes to Waymo. However, Levandowski may still be able to get Uber to pay the damages on his behalf. Uber indemnified Levandowski when it hired him in 2016. However, Reuters notes that, in a regulatory filing, Uber said it expected to challenge paying Levandowski's nine-figure judgment.
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Tesla isn't an autonomous car company.
Not yet or not fully yet.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/04... [techcrunch.com]
Re: Google and Uber throwing rocks at each other.. (Score:1)
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Tesla is not a company selling autonomous cars or autonomous taxi services.
Tesla is a company that sold cars years ago that they said could be used for such purposes after updates. asked extra money for the feature too.
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I'll eat my hat if their robotaxi service launches in 2020. I'll be incredibly surprised if it launches by 2025. And certainly not without major upgrades to the existing vehicles.
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That's alright, neither is Uber.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Your Tesla as a autonomous taxi service? (Score:4, Interesting)
Answer: Probably no. At least not by much (Score:2)
> Question is, would the profits out weigh the wear, tear, and possible liability insurance?
Given the price of a Tesla, no. Not by a significant amount, at least.
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Re: Your Tesla as a autonomous taxi service? (Score:2)
Question is, would the profits out weigh the wear, tear, and possible liability insurance?
Answer: "Don't ask stupid questions."
Re:Your Tesla as a autonomous taxi service? (Score:5, Informative)
I would never let my personal transportation become a livery vehicle.
I know how people treat things that aren't theirs.
Re: Your Tesla as a autonomous taxi service? (Score:3)
Imagine, you open your car door at the end of the work day to find vomit from a drunk passenger.
This is one of those features that might demo well, but it will never take off.
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Or worse, vomit and a drunk passenger.
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Or vomit and a dead, suffocated passenger...
Re: Your Tesla as a autonomous taxi service? (Score:1)
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> Question is, would the profits out weigh the wear, tear, and possible liability insurance?
I don't think there is any question. The car would be stolen immediately, or at least stripped for parts within hours. Even if the car has enough sophistication to call law enforcement, they're unlikely to take any risks for an unoccupied car on its way to a fraudulently placed car ride. And there are many places in most cities, typically under certain bridges or in tunnels, where there is no cell phone reception
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Based on my personal experience with my Model 3, I can say that a self-driving Tesla is still many many years down the road.
In fact, in our Canadian winter, I cannot see how it will ever be possible using only cameras...
That said, the day level 5 FSD cars are a reality in any weather, I would say that there won't be a need to buy cars anymore. Why buy a car to act as a taxi when you can just skip the buying part and pay per ride yourself ?
Chapter 11? (Score:2)
Can individuals file for chapter 11? I thought that was for restructuring a corporation?
Re:Chapter 11? (Score:4, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
He can do it, but with one main creditor, if Google requests conversion to chapter 7 then the court only weighs if that is best for all the creditors. Often, it isn't, because there are a lot of different creditors, and some have priority over others. So in liquidation, some get left out. Here, that's not really the case. His other debts will be minor, home loans or things like that, and Google can just agree to give them theirs first and then they get whatever they decide they want.
And he's still facing liquidation, unless for some reason Google decides to let him off the hook. Why would they? He's facing federal criminal charges for what he did to them. And if he's not incarcerated he'll have to be working, since he'll have lost his assets, and with Chapter 11, Google can request a trustee be appointed to manage his business interests. He could be forced to work where the trustee tells him under Chapter 11, a risk he wouldn't take under Chapter 7. So Google might first try something hardball like that, before requesting conversion to Chapter 7.
His lawyers probably think they're being cute, and he's totally screwed so he just does whatever they say.
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Didn't he tell Uber from the beginning that he had stolen proprietary documents? The company itself should have been criminally charged for receiving stolen property rather than just letting them off with a civil suit. After all:
"Corporations are people my friend!" - Presidential candidate Mitt Romney
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In America, when you have 100 million in assets, you get to join the ranks of privileged individuals, giving you benefits like filing for bankruptcy, a get-out-of-jail card, and having your vote actually counted (individuals votes are only cast, not counted).
Also known as corporations.
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The guy earned hundreds of millions of dollars. He most likely bought a super mansion in Florida (because that can't be taken away). And he most likely created multiple corporate structures/charities to hide his money, hire family members at inflated salaries, etc.
Uber should be barred from the market (Score:3)
Uber shouldn't be allowed to develop its own autonomous vehicle at all. Their blatant theft of Waymo's technology should leave them forever tarnished. At-best they should be a customer.
Re: Uber should be barred from the market (Score:3)
That's harsh. They could have an agreement to share their tech with a select few Waymo engineers to look for stolen tech, though. That seems more measured. It opens up moral hazard on the side of Waymo, but turnabout's fair play.
Re: Uber should be barred from the market (Score:1)
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They're already better than a newly minted 16 year-old driver, I have trouble believing you're that really naive (assuming the _engr in your username means 'engineer').
Re: Uber should be barred from the market (Score:1)
I hope Uber pays (Score:2)
If he got an indemnification clause in his contract from Uber, I hope Uber gets to foot the bill. That's kind of insane, given the job he was leaving and the job he was taking.
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Indemnification usually doesn't apply to criminal activity, and he's under indictment for this same conduct.
If it was a negotiated settlement, they'd be on the hook, but they'd have been the ones negotiating. But it isn't some sort of no-fault deal; he was found to have done the bad thing and to owe the money for it. So even if it hadn't been criminal, Uber could challenge paying it. But here, where it was criminal, they will easily win their challenge.
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If he sold or transferred that stolen intellectual property to Uber, they received the goods and the benefits of their possession, and they likely _knew_ the property was stolen. The intellectual property senior engineers bring with them from previous employers is one of the reasons companies _hire_ such people.much as the client list is a reason to hire sales and marketing personnel.
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IIRC he outright told them that it was Waymo's tech and he had several thousand more pages of their IP, which is why Uber went ahead and bought his company.
I just don't get it. (Score:4, Insightful)
It wasn't until his 'Otto' arrangement that Levandowski made serious money; but he had a long and fairly lucrative career in self-driving tech prior to that; easily at the level where he had his pick of jobs, if he felt like working; or enough money that doing so was optional without any sort of fanatical scrimping.
Is there really something you can do with a few hundred million that's so much better than what you can do with a few tens of millions that it's worth the unpleasantness of being dragged into court on grounds that might well turn out poorly for you? Money stops being able to buy time pretty much as soon as you run out of chores to outsource and holding down a 9-to-5 is optional; and it has similar limits for peace of mind. Poverty is stressful; but once you face no real risk of want or need to worry about your performance review the marginal comfort from an additional dollar is pretty tepid.
Why would you do something like this when you have already reached the point of diminishing returns? Arrogant enough to assume you'll get away with it? Actually won't be fulfilled in life until you have a sufficiently large yacht? Some sort of psychological anomally where your need to see the numbers going up doesn't diminish even once they get large enough that the difference no longer has practical relevance?
I just don't understand why someone would do this sort of thing.
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Hubris. Plenty of that in SV.
To paraphrase the film Interstellar "We didn't run out of [hubris], or [venture capital]. We ran out of [test kits]."
Re:I just don't get it. (Score:4, Informative)
Posting anon since I'm close to this space and the people in it.
It's worse. Google paid Levandowski a $120 million bonus before he left, so he could have just left without taking shit and he'd still be rich. Otto would have been fine without that stuff (other ex-Waymo-founder startups are doing well), as the idea was good and he had pedigree. Dunno where he burned that cash plus his share of the the Otto sale money. He's very brilliant but also arrogant, and was also prone to rushing rather than being careful. I guess that's why he couldn't leave cleanly because he didn't want to wait. A shame for sure.
As to the other part of your question, it's relative. When I was a kid I dreamed of having a million and being rich. Now you need $2M to own a house in much of Silicon Valley, and once you do, you hang out with those same people (a financial social-bubble). I've now passed my "should retire and move away" threshold, yet I'm not doing so. Been thinking about starting a company that I think would help the world more, but that means hanging around VCs and execs with money, which then rubs off. A house in Los Altos would be nice (~$4M), but objectively isn't worth it, yet I want one. Still figuring it out.
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The problem with this statement is that the "Otto" Arrangement that Levandowski came up with was nothing more than a ruse - a cover to hide his theft of trade secrets from Waymo. He walked out of his Waymo job with a huge amount of Waymo IP on his own personal computer equipment. In 6 months he claims that he started a company for self-driving trucks from scratch and built up $680 million in IP. He'd made no sales by that time.
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> Is there really something you can do with a few hundred million that's so much better than what you can do with a few tens of millions
Buy a US presidential election?
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Umm, he stole thousands of pages of Waymo's proprietary documents (after signing multiple contract over the years saying he wouldn't), and sold it to Uber. Uber knowingly bought stolen property. Where's the "nothing wrong" in that?
Re: I just don't get it. (Score:1, Troll)
"Umm, he is alleged to have made unauthorized copies of thousands of pages"
FTFY
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Ah, a 'no imaginary property' devotee. Got it.
so if you declare bankruptcy (Score:1)
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This is all a civil matter, he can't go to jail.
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No, it's not all a civil matter. Last August, Levandowski was charged criminally in federal court with theft/attempted theft of trade secrets, and is looking at the possibility of 10 years in federal prison plus $8.25 million in fines. He had to post $2 million in bail to stay out of jail until the trial.
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What a nice search history, would be a shame if some news papers would get hold of it
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This story is about a civil matter, he's got criminal charges pressing. Theft of millions of dollars in proprietary documentation. He's going to jail.
meh (Score:1)
The key information here is (Score:1)
Don't work for Google or Uber?
Bankruptcy won't protect him (Score:2)
Bankruptcy won't protect you from civil penalties especially where malfeasance is provable. It's one thing if you quit, quite another if you quit and take things that don't belong to you.
File this under "Good Luck With That"