Ex-Uber Engineer Pleads Guilty To Stealing Trade Secrets From Google (cnet.com) 19
Anthony Levandowski, former Google engineer and a pioneer of self-driving car tech, agreed to plead guilty Thursday to stealing trade secrets from the internet giant. CNET reports: Levandowski left Google in 2016 to start his own self-driving truck company, which was quickly acquired by Uber for $680 million. These actions set off a chain of events that led to Google's autonomous vehicle unit, Waymo, suing Uber over alleged theft of self-driving car trade secrets. That lawsuit settled in February 2018 with Uber agreeing to pay Waymo $245 million. The prosecutors indicted Levandowski in August in a suit that involves 33 counts of theft and attempted theft of trade secrets from Google. The activities allegedly took place as he prepared to leave the search giant to build out Uber's self-driving car operation.
Levandowski pleaded guilty to one count of trade secret theft in an agreement in which federal prosecutors agree to drop the remaining charges, according to a filing with the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California. The plea carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000. "I downloaded these files with the intent to use them for my own personal benefit, and I understand that I was not authorized to take the files for this purpose," Levandowski said in the filing. No sentencing date has yet been scheduled.
Levandowski pleaded guilty to one count of trade secret theft in an agreement in which federal prosecutors agree to drop the remaining charges, according to a filing with the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California. The plea carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000. "I downloaded these files with the intent to use them for my own personal benefit, and I understand that I was not authorized to take the files for this purpose," Levandowski said in the filing. No sentencing date has yet been scheduled.
Max (Score:1)
If it were up to me, he gets the max sentence.
So, Should Genius v. Google be a Criminal Case? (Score:3)
Genius Sues Google For 'No Less Than $50M', Alleging 'Anticompetitive Practices' Over Lyrics [slashdot.org]: Genius alleges that traffic to its site started to drop because its lyrics -- which are annotated by its contributors -- are being copied, and then published by Google via the tech giant's lyrics partner, LyricFind.
"pleaded guilty" (Score:1)
Ahhhh, how I do love the smell of coerced false confession in the morning!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: "pleaded guilty" (Score:1)
"Plea bargain" is nothing more that a cheap euphemism for "coerced confession". ALL coerced confessions are by definition false confessions.
You know who else had a giant gulag full of millions of people who "confessed"? The Soviet Union under Joeseph Stalin. Winning!
Re: "pleaded guilty" (Score:2)
Or, you know, he actually did do it, thought he would get away with it, and they have enough to prove that he did do it so he is cutting his losses.
Re: "pleaded guilty" (Score:1)
97% of people entombed in the Federal Gulag "confessed". That doesn't sound like tyranny to you?
Re: "pleaded guilty" (Score:2)
Yep, and as anyone who watched Shawshank redemption knows, everyone is prison is innocent.
Re: "pleaded guilty" (Score:1)
Everyone? No, of course not. Are some, perhaps even many, prisoners innocent? Obviously so. There'd be no need to travesty justice by coercing a false confession, if the accused could actually be proven guilty before a jury of his peers.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, it is possible they have everything on him. Which would be nice to know, what they have and how they have it. Just to understand a bit better what kind of a surveillance machine the Googleplex is, and can you even take a dump there without someone analyzing the literal shit out of it.
Re: (Score:2)
It's way more complicated than that. If a defendant has no money for a good defense, then plea deals are often bullshit. Defense for complex trials starts at 10s of thousands of dollars and goes up quickly. But when the defendant is worth many millions, then they can fund a defense which will raise enough reasonable (or unreasonable) doubt to avoid conviction. US law is often for sale to the highest bidder.
So when someone rich plea-bargains, it is usually because the evidence is overwhelming and even the
Re: "pleaded guilty" (Score:1)
While there may well be a small handful of wealthy people who confess, they are a tiny minority. The overwhelming majority of citizens can't even come close to affording a fair trial. We therefore have every reason to believe the majority of "plea bargain" cases are straight up railroading.
That our courts have descended to the everyday use of tyranny is a great stain on our national honor.
Re: (Score:2)
You seem to have switched from
"Plea bargain" is nothing more that a cheap euphemism for "coerced confession". ALL coerced confessions are by definition false confessions.
to
We therefore have every reason to believe the majority of "plea bargain" cases are straight up railroading.
Which is what I said, so I'm glad you admit that you were wrong. What is odd is that TFA is about an extremely rich defendant, while you keep talking about poor defendants.
Re: (Score:2)
Good example here:
https://theintercept.com/2020/... [theintercept.com]
One of the people framed by this officer pleaded guilty.
Hard to say (Score:2)
1. IANAL
2. I have read very little about this case. Kind of talking out my butt, here.
Every case is full of important detail, and we almost never see any of it.
Maybe he did it, maybe he didn't. Maybe he did it, but there are mitigating factors (I don't know what that would look like in this case).
For certain, his attorneys were telling him the conviction rate in the Feds, and NOBODY KNOWS what a jury will do. He was looking at some crazy numbers.
On the other hand, he agrees to confess ("taking responsibi
Re: Hard to say (Score:1)
Please re-read (Score:2)
Max penalty is 10 yrs, which means about 8.7 years in the Feds if he keeps all good time.
The fine maxes out at $250,000, not $25,000.
He has already been ordered to pay $179 million to Google for breach of contract. We haven't even started talking about restitution yet, and it is possible that prosecutors will seize more money from the sale as proceeds of crime.
I'm not saying this outcome will be worse than working a regular job, but it is certainly worse than what he could have expected if he hadn't decide
Reduced Jail Time for Giving Google the Idea? (Score:3)
According to a 2013 New Yorker story, Google was convinced to green-light the driverless car project shortly after Levandowski and other engineers went out and demonstrated it was possible [youtube.com] with an autonomous pizza car delivery car they built for a 2008 TV show.
From Has the self-driving car at last arrived? [newyorker.com]: Street View and Maps were logical extensions of a Google search. They showed you where to locate the things you'd found. What was missing was a way to get there. Thrun, despite his victory in the
I find it interesting. (Score:2)
He is guilty by his own admission. he took the plea deal, and he had the money
to fight it OJ style. so he's guilty and took the best offer possible ( up to 10 years )
I am guessing he was found with code that was not his under the rules of his employment.
I bet every HR manual will be updated over the course of the final rulings and judgements.
This case will be used over and over again.
you have some algo trader case from NYC.
Now you have this one.
and i understood there was another Algo trader case in london t