Interesting this is only against Anthony and not Uber this time. The stakes seem much smaller here. I would be surprised if he actually goes to prison for this. And max fine of $8 million or so is small for him
This was long expected. Waymo’s suit against Uber was civil, and they settled in the middle of the trial. The judge in that case referred the matter to the US Attorney’s Office given the facts at hand.
There have been a number of cases in the financial industry with trade secret theft and the perpetrator has been sent to prison. Why if he is convicted (likely imho) wouldn’t he also?
The maximum penalty is 250k per count or twice the gross gain/loss, whichever is greater. So the financial penalty could be quite significant.
Wouldn't a conviction open him up to a more costly civil suit? Harder to defend a civil suit if you're guilty in a related criminal charge.
Maybe so. At the time, everyone wondered why Google did not sue him, just Uber. Now I wonder if Google's legal team wasn't already in touch with the FBI/US attorney's office. It might be that the reason why they didn't pursue him in civil court was to leave the way open for the criminal procedure to blaze the trail. That would be sick, if so.
I got the impression that Google couldn't sue him, per se, because their employee arbitration requirements were working against them in this case.
I doubt he's open to civil suit - at least from Google: both parties are bound by an arbitration agreement that preceded the Uber debacle.
Hmm... If Anthony ends up taking a plea deal I wonder if there might be some details about Uber that might come up. I could totally see Anthony selling out Travis at least