Uber Fires Anthony Levandowski
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Here is some context for those who aren't current on the case.
One result of the injunction (all of the hearings up until now) was that uber needs to use all of its power to compel levandowski to testify, the extreme limit of which is firing him. Uber followed through as was legally required
This is one part of a number of things that came out of preliminary injunction hearings, other parts are (1) the breadth of the case is much smaller than as originally filed, its now about trade secrets, not about patent infringement (2) Waymo is allowed a bit more indepth "discover" to see if they can find evidence of their tech in ubers documents or in ubers hardware itself.
Legally, there is no inference that can be drawn from this to imply uber is guilty, they have willfully carried out a court order.
Uber still has a self driving car program, that is staffed by a few hundred engineers.
The case against levandowski has been referred to a federal prosecutor to review the possiblity of criminal charges against levandowski, if I was his lawyer and he was in this position, I would likely refer him to "plead the fifth" regardless of his guilt.
The case is most definitely still going to trial
How does firing him equate to pressuring him to testify?
"I still refuse to testify."
"Alright, you're fired."
That's all they can do.
Probably not a good idea to do something illegal in the middle of a lawsuit.
Uber has one and one chance only to get this behind them: to play by the book and to ask 'how high' when the judge tells them to jump. If they try anything funny they can expect the ROI of that to be substantial and negative.
OT, have you noticed an increase in superfluous downvoting? I'm not really complaining, just trying to figure out if I'm imagining it or if it's randomness doing its thing.
Since HN has become so much bigger, I wonder if the mods could scale down the effect of downvoting. E.g. make it take two downvotes to make a comment appear at 0.
It removes scores from your comments and replaces your karma counter with "(9999)".
HN is much more pleasant now.
The location was a factory for a company you have heard of. Temporary employees were 99 and 44/100% of the workforce. One staffing agency, call it Agency A, had the main contract for the site and they were required to give some of the work to their competitors. It was policy to assign temps from other agencies impossible schedules so that they would quit and be replaced by temps from Agency A.
Legend has it that Japanese companies, rather than terminate under-performing employees, will seat them "at the window" and not assign them any tasks at all ... This is not terribly compelling short-term, but is horribly boring .
Also, you probably would have to hide all the work, since depending on your contract your employer would probably have some claim to it, since it was during work hours.
I once worked at a newspaper, when "online" was new and side project of the marketing department so that they could sell more ads.
Until I automated things, we were cutting and pasting a few articles each night from Quark into BBEdit and hand-massaging it into HTML templates for upload. They assigned us an "editor". Poor guy had written pro-civil-rights editorials at a time when that didn't go over well. Got assigned shit jobs for decades to try and force him out. We didn't create new content; there was nothing to edit. But, they made him go to all the meetings and report that each day. Dude used a giant trackball and knew nothing about tech, but somehow landed in the department that would one day rule the newsroom. I wonder how he's doing these days.
What do you think they do with the managers they want to fire? ;)
Hell, even in the entertainment industry, where employment is gig-based, Masashi Tashiro didn't get blackballed until he was convicted twice for voyeurism, twice for drug abuse, once for nearly crippling a guy in a car accident he caused, and once for posessing an illegal weapon [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masashi_Tashiro#Second_trial_f...
The "pointless simple make-work" isn't to build up cause, it's to abuse and degrade them until they have enough of it and quit. The technical term for this is "constructive dismissal".
From what I recall, that purchase was made in Uber stock, and I'd expect it to have a vesting schedule. Depending on the length of the initial cliff, it seems possible that he hasn't vested any of that stock. I am speculating though and don't know for sure.
(IANAL but if I were I would probably not counsel doing that in any case. :-P )
[EDIT: NOTE BELOW](1) Levandowsky took information from google in some kind of physical way (files on a thumb drive, network transfer etc), it doesn't count if he just took the files by "memorizing" them in his brain
(2) The information that was stole was secret, and highly beneficial to google/waymo
(3) Levandowsky used the information that he stole to influence designs at uber, and specific uber designs can be traced back to information in those docs
Proving these 3 things in a civil case is tricky, that is why waymo is trying to get a lot of "discovery" which is basically the ability for google/waymo to gather information on ubers corporate network.
EDIT: (1) isn't true, but there are some strange edge cases around what stealing is, like, if levandowski is developing the state of the art stuff himself, and had been working on it since before waymo, what is his knowledge, and what is google/waymo's trade secrets?
It is true that you can't prevent someone from practicing their profession under the terms of California employment law (other states vary) -- but if you take reasonable steps to protect your trade secrets, the employees can be bound to honor that secrecy by not disclosing them to future employers.
Source: I've been involved in a trade secret dispute (it was nonsense but annoying), and I am definitely not a lawyer.
We found that six weeks before his resignation this former employee, Anthony Levandowski, downloaded over 14,000 highly confidential and proprietary design files for Waymo’s various hardware systems, including designs of Waymo’s LiDAR and circuit board. To gain access to Waymo’s design server, Mr. Levandowski searched for and installed specialized software onto his company-issued laptop. Once inside, he downloaded 9.7 GB of Waymo’s highly confidential files and trade secrets, including blueprints, design files and testing documentation. Then he connected an external drive to the laptop. Mr. Levandowski then wiped and reformatted the laptop in an attempt to erase forensic fingerprints.
Ref: https://medium.com/waymo/a-note-on-our-lawsuit-against-otto-...
An SVN client being used to access an SVN repository is hardly unusual, certainly not in the way insinuated by the wording presented.
Basically, I don't think it's hard to construct an entirely innocent narrative of events (assuming SVN access was normal for him). The later developments do make it look fishy, but since I doubt anyone would have thought anything amiss with the list of actions without the later events, it's far from a smoking gun when taken by itself.
The laptop in question connected to Google only 3 times between March 2, 2015 and November 25, 2015, despite being configured to connect every 15 minutes. ~ 2 hours on Oct 22, ~2 hours on Nov 20, and "briefly" on Nov 25. (My interpretation? It was almost always off and not in use).
Windows was reinstalled on Nov 26th.
On Dec 3, searched were done on Google's internal search system for how to log in and setup access through SVN to the driving car project ("chauffer").
Tortoise SVN was downloaded and installed on Dec 11. It then "downloaded over 14,000 files from the SVN repository". (My interpretation? A SVN checkout of the entire repo was done).
A USB card reader was attached on Dec 14 for about 8 hours.
On Dec 18, the laptop was reinstalled with Goobuntu (Google's custom Ubuntu).
The machine stayed on and checking in to Google normally from the time of the install until Dec 21, when it received a "machine certificate", within a minute of which it was not seen again on Google's networks, despite being configured to connect every 15 minutes (My interpretation? It was off again).
The filing goes on to talk about some Google drive exports of documents that don't necessarily look good for Levandowski.
My purpose here isn't to convince anyone that he's innocent, just to point out that Google's allegations are worded in a way to cast the most suspicion while being technically true. Through the omission of the timeline it sounds like his actions were all taken at once, which looks a little more premeditated, when instead it was over a period of a couple weeks. It's entirely possibly that Levandowski purposefully obfuscated his actions by spreading them out temporally, so this isn't evidence he didn't do what is alleged, but I think it's important people have the facts before making judgments based on Waymo's lawyer's accounting, which is obviously as beneficial to Waymo as possible, as should be expected.
1: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3515476-Declaration-...
All of that is bad for Levandowski, but it's unclear if any of those files got used by Uber, which is where the case may very well fizzle out.
Actually, no. All they have is that a few days after an SVN sync, a USB card reader was attached for 8 hours. There is no evidence presented that he actually copied any files, much less the synced SVN files, to whatever was connected with the USB card reader. He could have plugged it in to copy his personal SSH keys to the machine and left it in until he left for the day for all we know.
There is separate information that he exported a single Google Drive file to a personal device on January 11, titled "Chauffer TL Weekly Updates - Q4 2015". There are further logs about other high level engineers that subsequently left that also exported Google Drive files to personal devices prior to leaving as well.
The summary does seem to make it pretty clear which way the preponderance of evidence goes. That'd be an awful lot of coincidences to have all that stuff lining up in one particular way -- it just seems unlikely.
The expert testimony identified a specific model card reader attached to the computer a full three days later. It didn't say that a memory card was ever inserted into the card reader and mounted a logical volume. Nor did the expert testimony mention any files copied to an external drive. The have an expert testimony with specific details from logs about a card reader being inserted but no specific details about a storage device or files being copied? Does the lack of these details but specificity of other details not strike anyone else as odd?
The only copying of files that were specifically identified in the expert testimony was the copying of about a half dozen files to Google drive. That's it. I'm not saying that there isn't the possibility of wrongdoing, but the expert testimony certainly doesn't support the allegations enough to meet the criteria of "preponderance of evidence" for me at least. The testimony definitely doesn't meet the criteria of being a smoking gun, yet that is how it has been reported.
Not particularly. There's only so much they can log easily by tying into the system. Card reader insertions are easily tracked through OS level event logs in most operating systems, but generating a log entry for every file copy that happens is quite another level of granularity.
It's sort of like street level cameras. They may catch someone going into a a house or business, but unless you have prior knowledge that there is a camera inthe house or business that the state should have access to, omission of footage of what happened inside does not insinuate that something is being omitted on purpose.
> The only copying of files that were specifically identified in the expert testimony was the copying of about a half dozen files to Google drive.
Yep, and only one of them was by Levandowski. "Chauffer TL Weekly Updates - Q4 2015"
There's only so much that the expert testimony was able to establish. But what it did do was get the judge to authorize more discovery, so Google will apparently get a lot of data from Uber to search through to find their smoking gun, if it exists.
Also, while copying isn't auditable on windows, windows can audit object reads and writes. Were there any logs showing that the directory with the files were read while the card reader was inserted into the machine? It's off by default however. Does anyone know the default audit settings of a new google windows installation to know what folders it turns on logging for if any?
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc976403.aspx
These are all issues and details I would expect to be mentioned in an expert's report if they weren't trying to be selective in the details they provided. Since this expert works for Google, omitting details in Google's favor wouldn't surprise me. I didn't see any statement in the expert's report where they had to make a statement under oath where they declare that they aren't omitting any other details that may be relevant to the court. Without such a declaration, it's possible to be truthful, but deceptive without perjuring yourself.
As I understand it it's not out of the realm of possibility for a lawyer to advise doing so even for completely innocent clients. It's not hard to get tripped up on the stand and sound guilty even when you aren't.
Now that ought to be evidence that Uber could use in its defense. Instead, Uber is going to extrordinary lengths to try to keep it out of the trial.
Personally, I suspect we'll eventually fine out that Levandoswki - and others, check the filing - did steal trade secrets.
Yes.
> Was the design not similar enough to prove Uber's use of Google's IP?
It may well be, at trial, in court.
> Am I remembering or interpreting the story incorrectly?
No - but it still has to be demonstrated to be true to the extent required for a civil case.
"Beyond reasonable doubt" is the standard of evidence required in a criminal case. The standard of evidence required in a civil case is a "preponderance of the evidence". This standard is met if the proposition is more likely to be true than untrue (ie >50% chance).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(law)#Preponde...
Misdirected emails happen. I was even recently called by a vendor on my cell phone (side effect of open offices: no office phone) for an old company that wanted to talk about the sensors they were using for a new project. The vendor still thought I worked there even two years after leaving.
It's doubtful whether this will be even admitted as evidence.
If the court is compelling Uber to produce documents and/or information, and if those documents/information are in the hands on one employee, then the courts are compelling Uber to compel employee. That's Uber's card to play, "punishment, up to and including termination".
The court didn't order Uber to fire Levandowski, it ask Uber to do everything within its power to produce documents/information.
> immediately and in writing exercise the full extent of their corporate, employment, contractual, and other authority to (a) prevent Anthony Levandowski and all other officers, directors, employees, and agents of defendants from consulting, copying, or otherwise using the downloaded materials; and (b) cause them to return the downloaded materials and all copies, excerpts, and summaries thereof to Waymo (or the Court) by MAY 31 AT NOON [1]
---
I believe that authority includes firing him if he did not comply.
[1] https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3722249/Uber-Inju...
Source: https://arstechnica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Uber.Waym... (page 23, footnote 9).
Its also entirely unclear if they will actually lose the case or not. Comments made in the PI ruling make it seem very ambiguous, and it will hinge on the results of further discovery. If no new relevant evidence is found in discover, uber will be found innocent.
This is civil, so a preponderance of evidence is the burden here. Can he fight that at all without talking? Google has a ton of evidence that he 'downloaded' a lot of stuff. It's not a big jump to see Otto/Uber made a tremendous amount of progress pretty rapidly too. I'm not the judge but being an engineer, knowing other engineers, hearing Google's story about the data he took, seeing the dollar figures, it seems damning. What evidence is there to the other side if he won't explain things?
Pleading the fifth in a civil case can be used as a negative inference, so if you're not prepared to talk and the other side has evidence it's going to be an uphill struggle at best.
The termination letter indicates that the termination is for cause and may have implications on stock awards and other compensation:
"Under the Stock Award and other agreements, you are entitled to 20 days to cure the events that give rise to this termination for Cause. This letter constitutes the “prior written notice” triggering the commencement of that 20day period."
Actually there's nothing preventing them from hiring him back after the court case concludes, is there? IANAL.
The deal is: Levandowski pled the 5th and refused to produce a lot of documents that he was ordered to by the court. Uber can't plead the 5th as it's not a natural person and it isn't be criminally prosecuted (EDIT: dragonwriter points out that non-natural persons can plead the 5th. For various reasons, Uber isn't asserting 5th Amendment protections, and the details of why it isn't aren't wildly important here. I regret the error).
Judge Alsup basically said, "You can't, like, inherit Levandowski's protections. You have to do everything possible to you in order to produce the documents that I've ordered you to produce. That means getting your employee to cooperate, or firing him." Uber asked Levandowksi to cooperate, and then when he didn't, they fired him. It was very much on Alsup's order.
Uber can plead the fifth [EDIT: no, it can't, see note at end] (it applies not just to natural persons, and corporations are subject to criminal process as well), but a party to a civil suit pleading the fifth can have that held against them, and if you take the fifth you can't do it selectively, any issue you take the fifth on you can't offer any testimony relating to. Taking the Fifth would be essentially waiving a defense on key points, and civil suits have a preponderance of the evidence standard, not the criminal beyond a reasonable doubt standard, so it would be fairly easy for Waymo to prove points against Uber where Uber essentially surrendered the ability to defend.
EDIT: while the discussion of the effects of taking the Fifth in a civil case of this type are something I stand behind, the basic premise (that Uber could take the Fifth) is incorrect; the self-incrimination protection of the Fifth is an exceptional provision of the Bill of Rights in that it has been held to apply only to individuals, not corporations and other similar entities, under the "collective entity rule."
He had one such gentleman on trial, representing himself. He was called to testify, and decided he was going to plead the fifth on specific questions he didn't want to answer while on the stand, which isn't how it works.
The judge had to explain to him that he had already waived his right to plead the fifth, and was going to have to answer honestly under oath, not a good look in front of a jury.
Isn't that untrue in California?
IIRC, you are correct in suits under California law, but this has no effect in suits under federal law that happen to be heard in California. How that applies to this case may be complicated because it involves both state and federal law claims in federal court.
Uber's model in most domains is to push hard over the line in the hopes of moving that line. More charitably this could be called "ask for forgiveness rather than permission". So canning Levendowski could be seen as simply a case of this.
But Google's suit is against Uber, not Levendowski, who could now spill beans on all sorts of unsuspected malfeasance. At this point what has he got to lose? If he decides to cooperate with google things could get very interesting.
Nor is the judiciary powerless against attempts to exploit loopholes, if they indeed exist.
"Muahahaha! The law is powerless against me and I can violate it with impunity by judicious word choice" is largely a fantasy.
This "law hack" would be immediately caught by Waymo and Judge Alsop would rightfully penalize Uber. The corporate officers who signed off on an action like that would likely be criminally liable as well.
The problem is, how do you differentiate between equity whose grant is meant to manipulate a party of a crime and equity justly earned by working there?
If I were Uber, I would fire him and if possible, revoke any equity he had to absolve the company from any accusations of implied manipulation.
His freedom. There's a reason he took the Fifth, and tried to force Uber not to release information to support that.
All of his money and perhaps his freedom. If he essentially sold Google property to Uber he could be on the hook to hand over all the money he made from doing it plus punitive damages, and some of the conduct that's been alleged against him could even rise to the level of criminal charges.
He's taking the 5th here for a reason. He stands to lose, literally, everything.
He's still a bright engineer who could go on to do things in the self-driving car space. His expertise and exposure to the most cutting-edge IP is worth quite a bit. The less damage he gets out of this legally and the less dirt thrown on his name the more he will be able to turn that into real long term monetary value.
Not to mention the social costs.
If I was him I'd also being doing as much as possible to minimize the negative outcome of these legal proceedings for all who were involved with him.
I'd rather have, say, $20M plus a reasonable shot at making a lot of money in the future with a marginal reputation than risk my name being run through the dirt for a chance at $250M. Many smart people who had a shaky past have gone on to be successful. Talent/having the right skillset at the right time seems to trump (no pun intended) bad press ... in America especially.
My, admittedly cynical, take is much simpler, his lawyer sat him down and said something along the lines of: "screw the 250 million, keep your damn mouth shut if you want to stay out of prison".
For what Levandowski is accused of and how he is accused of doing it, there should be plenty of either incriminating or exculpatory evidence, if the parties involved want to divulge it. Google isn't some district attorney trying to look tough on crime for the voters, nobody outside of Google and Uber really care all that much about the case really care or which way it goes. Levandowski, by pleading the 5th has already been found guilty in the court of public opinion (yes, yes, shame on all of us) so he can't be clinging to whatever shreds of his reputation are left for future jobs.
It's not impossible that he is innocent and his lawyer thinks the best strategy is to plead the 5th anyway, I just don't happen to buy it myself.
It is extremely uncommon for someone to take the 5th Amendment in a civil dispute. It, justifiably, raises a ton of red flags that something very serious is going on.
When people sue each other they don't get to remain silent, they're subject to depositions, discovery, being put on the stand, and having to explain themselves. Your comment applies to criminal matters, it's not comparable at all.
And the judge didn't buy it (rightly, IMHO).
Except in this case, we already know that "something very serious is going on" - there are obvious, substantial criminal implications to what Google is alleging.
"Don't say anything that might increase the chance of you going to trial" starts sounding quite a bit more reasonable, there, even if Levandowski is innocent.
Google obviously has much more to gain by suing Uber than suing a dude. If Google needs information, and Levandowski has that information, it would seem to be a good deal.
But if there's also possible criminal proceedings, Levandowski would need to make a similar deal with the government too?
But there's still a pretty stark line between being a strategic competitor and being a scummy traitor who steals trade secrets and the labor of his coworkers. If it came down to a choice between shutting down Uber's self-driving car program and ruining Levandowski, I'm sure a lot of people would want to choose the latter, even though it's "irrational." Principles are important.
Google could offer not to bring a civil suit against him, but it sounds like criminal charges are on the table and he's trying to avoid anything that might help that investigation.
Here's a recent example: a friend of mine was raped and strangled to death last month. They caught her alleged murderer last week. When the media got a hold of it, they found out that he had been accused of rape and attempted strangulation five years ago, but police decided not to press charges because the victim wanted to let it drop.
So yeah, it happens; it's just a spectacularly bad idea for the police to do it. If they hadn't declined to file charges, my friend and another murder victim would probably still be alive today.
Source: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2017/05/26/man-killed-...
Google's suit is against Uber, not Levendowski, because Uber has the capital to go after. I Am Not An IP Lawyer, but I'd guess that if Levendowski had substantial assets, he'd be named a party in the complaint.
My guess is that this firing is mainly a move to improve Uber's political capital "Look we fired the bad apple". I'd assume Uber has probably figured out how to tie his interests into cooperating with him (to the detriment of exposing IP theft) though maybe granting him equity or some sort of financial incentive.
Uber: Hey, we're really sorry that things didn't work out but "here's some equity for the time that you worked here" oh and by the way here's the estimated value of that equity if we win the lawsuit or don't win the law suit.
Uber is complying with a court order to do their utmost to compel him to cooperate and testify. This is not political and it's also possible that they still don't want him to testify either way but they have to be seen to do the "right thing" in the eyes of the court.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/27/business/uber-chief-execu...
I'm going to call my mom today and tell her I love her.
If Levandowski is targeted by federal prosecutors, can he argue inevitable discovery based on existing public domain principles and papers (textbooks, etc.)?
I find it hard to believe that Google is the only innovator in Lidar thus far. It just seems like they are because it's now cool.
But, the court said, it looks very much like Levandowski did take Waymo's files and use them at Uber, and the files "likely contain at least some trade secrets." So, basically, even if these are weak trade secrets claims and there aren't that many secrets, Uber and Levandowski have looked so bad on the question of whether they stole them that the Court was willing to say "fire him or else."
Here is that order if you're interested: https://www.plainsite.org/dockets/download.html?id=244394038... See pages 11-17.
Youtube starts in April 2005. Is bought by Google October 2006.
I wonder how things would have played out if Otto was never acquired.
Uber is investing in a self-driving research unit in Toronto, Canada led by Raquel Urtasun [1].
Seems like a move to dodge all this Waymo brouhaha and benefit from Toronto's deep learning scene.
[1] https://www.techcrunch.com/2017/05/08/uber-hires-raquel-urta...
The current state of immigration in the US has been reported to drive developments in deep learning to Canada[2].
[1] https://careers-uber.icims.com/jobs/search?ss=1&searchCatego...
[2] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a-new-ai-hub-in-c...
This has got to be painful for all the parties involved, I can only hope that people who are watching are thinking to themselves "hmm, seems like some bad choices." And whether or not they are really bad or just being painted that way, it gives you a sense of how everything will be used to craft a narrative around the sequence of events that serves the purposes of the people doing the crafting, not necessarily the participants about whom the narrative speaks.
Having experienced personally the effects of bad actors trying to create a narrative that differed markedly from 'reality' in order to protect their own vulnerability I know how pulling only certain "facts" out of the history can tell a different story than the truth.
If an ex employee of a company making a competing product walked into my office with a large treasure trove of files I would not automatically assume that he had re-created those files in his spare time.
Uber being 100% innocent would be highly surprising.
Should be fun when the due diligence docs come out, and we get Uber's view of how Otto went from a value of zero to $680M in 7 months, with only legitimate IP, 5 Trucks, and 90 employees.
1.) At the time of acquisition, Levandowski was one of the world's leading experts on self driving technology.
2.) As one of the world's leading experts, Levandowski was able to recruit an incredible team.
3.) Self driving technology could be worth trillions and, in Uber's particular case, it would remove one of their biggest cost centres, thus making their business instantly profitable.
It's complete BS but that's the reason for the valuation, he can do it, Google already paid him that much and he 'wanted to do his own thing,' it's going to cost you to hire that guy.
Can you even spin up and staff a company in that time frame and integrate a lot of the technical parts in to something very meaningful in 9 months? With custom hardware and stuff that seems insanely tight (but there is a lot of money at play, you push hard) Even if there are off the shelf components that do most of the work and they're pre-integrated that seems insanely aggressive. I can only assume Otto didn't have any IP of real value other than a staff.
But even then I'd agree that they're probably guilty of "intentionally not thinking too hard about it", at the very least.
https://www.axios.com/analysis-uber-gets-bruised-though-not-...
It is beyond suspicious, but then again, maybe pigs really can fly.
- if the IP ends up being stolen then you may not have recourse against the person that sold it to you
- if the IP ends up being stolen you might end up being liable yourself because you did not do the minimum verification required to ascertain that the seller indeed had the rights to sell
That changes the game from 'we've been had' to 'we were willing participants' and that's a very dumb position to be in.
Or maybe Uber's just complicit. But you're introducing facts not in evidence based on your assumptions about how this went down.
Note that "Uber" actually includes Ottomotto LLC, which is a named defendant, and whose assets and liabilities belong to Uber. Constructing a scenario where Levandowski is at fault but both Ottomotto LLC and Uber, excluding Ottomotto, are innocent is tricky.
To the extent it puts pressure on the companies -- perhaps. But it shouldn't hurt the employees themselves; on the contrary, perhaps it encourages the companies to keep engineers around by granting enticing equity packages with long-ish vesting schedules.
Or you're right, and they'll just collude. Guess it could go either way...!
Either way, I don't think Google cares. They want to be first on the market. And based on how badly Uber has been flouting the law, I suspect Google gets there first no matter what. This just slows Uber down.
It won't matter though. Money will change hands. And that's about it. Google/Alphabet/Waymo/Lyft will be first to market in a pretty shitty way, followed by Uber. The tech world and early adopters will go nuts and in this case probably die in a fire. Then Apple and Tesla will come in with a far superior safety/user experience and take over.
None of this really matters at this point. It's a waiting game. This is what Apple always does and what Tesla has started doing: wait for the early entries in the market to do their thing, learn from their mistakes, and pwn the market later with better UX and marketing.
If Google would let it be known that you can take a bunch of IP and walk out the front door to a competitor that would be a very expensive signal.
So for them this is as much about this concrete case as it is about how Google will deal with situation where their IP grows legs.
Well, for the moment, the record is exactly the opposite of that prediction.
That is how I would calculate it...
In general, "actual" damages are not the only thing in the world. If all you ever could get were "actual" damages, it would almost always be more efficient to breach contracts :)
* Actual loss: the amount that the victim company lost in sales, customers, etc. because another company stole its trade secret. Here this is probably zero, since there are no self-driving cars in the market. (Although who knows, maybe Waymo lost partnership opportunities with large automakers to Uber)
* Reasonable royalties: hypothetically, if Uber licensed the allegedly stolen tech from Waymo, how much would they have paid?
* Unjust enrichment: benefit the Bad Guy got from the Bad Act(s), for example the amount of R&D that it didn't have to spend because it just shortcut the process.
Plus, in California, there's punitive damages available for twice the amount of damages. Which, if the facts are anything like what's alleged, Waymo will get.
The numbers add up fast.
In the end, in a lawsuit like this, you must come up with an economic model that quantifies the damage, and must convince the judge (or jury, or whoever awards the damage claims) to accept it. So it's also a question of psychology. If you can show that an action was morally outrageous, you have a better chance to get awarded a higher damage claim.
The question now is, what did Uber know and when did it know it. Did Uber had contact with that employee when he was still working at Google? I wouldn't be surprised if Uber sued the guy in the future.
Honest question - can they do that to him, or anyone else, before guilt is actually proven? What if the result is that nothing is found?? Can he counter-sue for wrongful termination??
Next time if you are company X and are angry your employee Y left for company Z, just sue Z in hopes they will let Y go.
Additionally, I wonder if Uber has clawback agreements in place for their Otto acquisition.
https://regmedia.co.uk/2017/05/19/levandowski-waymo-fifth.pd...
"The bite of the Court’s May 11, 2017 Preliminary Injunction Order, as it relates to nonparty Anthony Levandowski, can be summarized quite simply: 'Waive your Fifth Amendment rights... or I will have you fired. The choice is yours, Mr. Levandowski.' But, even when framed as a “choice,” this command runs counter to nearly a half century of United States Supreme Court precedent, beginning with Garrity v. State of New Jersey, 385 U.S. 493 (1967), in which the Court held that the Fifth Amendment forbids a government entity from threatening an individual with the choice “between self-incrimination and job forfeiture.” Id. at 497, 500. As the Supreme Court observed in Garrity, the “option to lose [one’s] means of livelihood or pay the penalty of self-incrimination is the antithesis of free choice to speak out or to remain silent.” Id. at 497. As the Supreme Court made clear, whenever a state actor imposes this choice between “the rock and the whirlpool,” it engages in unlawful constitutional compulsion, which, among other things, operates to immunize any resulting testimonial statements."
Isn't anyone else here bothered by the due process implications of Judge Alsup's demand to force Levandowski to give up a Constitutional right or be fired? I'm generally a fan of Alsup, but this sets terrible precedence.
Its worth remembering that, at this point, this is only a civil suit, so among other things, silence can actually be used against you (adverse interference).
Personally, one of criteria I would use to determine whether or not to take the 5th would depend on the general position of the public towards me. If the public generally thinks I am guilty before I've testified and they are generally taking in evidence and arriving at the conclusion that I'm guilty without truly considering the existing evidence, it'd would be stupid for me to testify.
I don't think there is a soul here that hasn't at least once had experiences where every one of their actions were viewed as having malicious intent by the peanut gallery. Once you experience such injustices firsthand as the accused, you learn empathy for others in similar circumstances quite quickly.
Sorry about your friend, but why is it a "spectacularly bad idea" for police to do so? What alternative do they have? If the sole victim is unwilling to cooperate with the investigation and subsequent trial, their chances of actually succeeding in imprisoning that scumbag are approximately zero. If you want to blame someone, go find the stupid, selfish woman who wanted to "let it drop" 5 years ago. Remember that old saying about evil flourishing because good people do nothing.
In the country that I live in, the justice system rightly requires that guilt in criminal cases is proved "beyond reasonable doubt". In court, the accused has every reason to allege that the alleged victim was "up for it" and "consenting" and "enjoyed it".
The victim who "lets it drop" in these circumstances may be selfish - but they aren't stupid when they weigh the cost to themselves of an adversarial court case against the gain to themselves of a rape conviction. In an ideal world all women would feel strong enough to testify in a rape case but maybe this isn't an ideal world.
Testifying that someone raped you isn't like testifying that someone stole your wallet. It's way more intimate and personal and dangerous.
To the thread starter - I am so sorry that your friend was raped and killed. Please look after yourself and talk to someone about how you are feeling.
First, the DA in the American system is not guaranteed to lose. Rather, unless the alleged perpetrator is extremely wealthy, the DA has a tremendous advantage. This is unbelievably common knowledge and something he picked up working closely with FBI and DEA agents.
Second, when you don't have a cooperative victim, a skilled investigator will investigate why. Often this happens because either the perpetrator made a very graphic threat and/or the victim suffers from post traumatic stress disorder. In this case, a highly skilled investigator would make sure that the victim had access to the best victim services people around.
Further to that, a skilled investigator/prosecutor combination will take steps to shield and protect the victim from an adversarial system. One common method would be to overcharge, announce they're going for a max sentence and plea down to avoid trial, while still guaranteeing a sentence, probation and sex offender registries.
There is your precious answer. Now, take some time to evaluate what kind of heartless asshole calls a victim 'stupid'.
His current employer is irrelevant.
Plus, "on his own" is not correct. Team Blue 2005 had nine members: http://archive.darpa.mil/grandchallenge05/TechPapers/BlueTea...
Now I don't understand taking the Fifth. If everyone takes the Fifth, how do you convict someone? Find evidences, and have the a grand jury find the person guilty?
You can plead the Fifth in a civil case if you believe that answering the question could subject you to criminal prosecution. But, unlike in a criminal case, where you have an absolute right to remain silent (and it can not be held against you), a judge or jury in a civil case can draw whatever conclusions they wish from your lack of testimony.
No matter what got you fired.
Think of it from the standpoint of a small-company CEO, on the margins, trying to get traction any way possible. Yes, 90% of them won't want to hire you -- at least on 90% of the days that they come to work. But inevitably, one of them will say: "Let's give it a try." They need brainpower. They need people who have played in the big leagues. And the notion of taking a risk on someone that their archrivals have discarded ... with at least the faint possibility of making it work ... is very hard to resist.
Finding evidence and having a jury (not a grand jury, grand juries indict, but do not convict) find someone guilty is exactly how trials work in the United States. One of the fundamental tenants of the US legal system is that nobody is obligated to testify against themselves (except in some very limited circumstances). It's the job of either the government (in the case of a crime) or the opposing party (in the case of a civil action) to prove that a person did things they are accused of, not the job of the person to prove they did not.
That and good old fashioned greed.
Yeah, things aren't looking awesome for him to work for anyone else. Perhaps he should look into starting his own company in the self driving car space. It worked out well last time he tried! /s
The Fifth Amendment is often misunderstood. It only prevents the government from being able to compel you to confess to your own guilt. It does not prevent the government from during conclusions from other sources, nor even does it prevent the government from making you provide evidence to support its claims.
For example, say you habitually recorded all conversations in your office, and one day you talk about covering up a burglary you ordered. You cannot be compelled to reveal this fact: if the government asks you "Do you record your conversations?", you can plead the Fifth, and the government can't order you to turn over recordings of conversations you may or may not have. However, if you admit that you do (or someone else tells the government), then the government can order you to turn over recordings, and you cannot plead the Fifth.