Levandowski files suit against Uber [pdf]
ipfs.eternum.io
ipfs.eternum.io
Mostly unrelatedly, this part seems particularly shitty:
> In fact, Uber had considered acquiring Tyto in 2015 but declined to do so at that time. Tyto was ultimately acquired by Otto with Uber’s consent and at Uber’s request prior to Uber closing on its acquisition of Otto to secure a lower price for Tyto than what Tyto would have requested had it known that Uber was the acquirer.
> Specifically, Uber was aware that Mr. Levandowski had facilitated the relationship between Tyto’s founder and its investor, a holding company managed by Mr. Stojanovski that invested funds provided by two irrevocable trusts formed for the benefit of Mr. Levandowski’s children, and would visit Tyto and his friends at that company to talk about technical and business matters from time to time. Uber was also aware of Pierre Droz’ (a Google employee) allegations that Mr. Levandowski was involved with Tyto and even deposed him extensively on that very topic during the Waymo litigation.
Part of Google's claims (rightly, imo, though ianal) was that Levandowski had a stake or outright controlled Tyto while he was at Google and before he had even formed Otto.
Just before your quoted section shows how shady the whole thing was.
>Uber’s claims were false. Uber accepted Mr. Levandowski’s tender of indemnity only after Google’s commencement of the arbitration proceeding alleging claims relating to Tyto and only after Mr. Levandowski had been interviewed by Uber extensively about Google’s allegations relating to Tyto. In addition, Mr. Levandowski’s devices given to Stroz had extensive information about Tyto on them. And Stroz had specifically identified other materials on Mr. Levandowski’s devices that he had not disclosed during interviews.
This is basically Uber saying (among other things) "yeah, we didn't know you were connected to Odin Wave/Tyto that Google is making claims about, that's outside the indemnity agreement."
And his response is "Oh no, you totally knew"
If I found out that my new employer/acquirer was dishonest to get me on board with the terms we ended up on, sure they "won" the negotiation in a way they're entitled to, but it's going to sour the relationship for good reason and I'd say it's bad behavior that makes the ecosystem worse for all of us.
But Levandowski screwed over his friend by getting him a lower price than he would have gotten.
This isn't CVS and Coke, this is one friend buying from another, only to turn around and flip it for more immediately.
> As a result of Uber’s breaches, Mr. Levandowski has suffered damages in an amount to be proven at trial, which amount should be at least $4.128 billion.
Here's an excerpt from a New Yorker article about the case:
> The judge, William Alsup, quickly tired of such distractions. “Despite the excellent quality of the lawyers here, I cannot trust what they say,” he announced in court. The documents he was being shown, he said, included “a lot of half-truth” and arguments that were “not quite accurate.” Alsup clearly thought that something unseemly had occurred, writing in one ruling that Levandowski had resigned from Waymo “under highly suspicious circumstances,” and that the “14,000-plus purloined files likely contain at least some trade secrets.” He also noted that “it would strain credulity to imagine that Levandowski plundered Waymo’s vault the way he did with no intent to make use of the downloaded trove.” Yet Alsup wasn’t sure if Waymo had demonstrated that any of its information had been used in an illegal manner. “If you can’t prove that Uber got these trade secrets, then maybe you’re in a world of trouble,” he told Waymo’s lawyers.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/did-uber-steal...
Faced with a weak case, Google settled quietly for 0.33% of Uber's stock, which is no tiny amount, but definitely not a landmark settlement.
The more concerning part is that:
1. Google pursued Lewandowski with the help of federal prosecutors, using the threat of criminal trade secret charges and
2. He was essentially abandoned by both his former employer and his current employer. The former attacked him to punish him for wrongdoing and to set an example. Uber abandoned him because he became too risky now that he became a weak point that could be exploited in court.
This feels like too much leverage for a former employer to have, regardless of whether you were truly guilty or not. In fact, I think the outcome would have been similar had Lewandowski stolen nothing at all.
If you or I did any of those things we'd have been crucified. The fact that he's still standing is a testament to our dual legal system, one for the wealthy and powerful and one for the normals. Had he just left without stealing the IP he'd be fine. He even could have gotten away with violating his non-solicit agreement. The fact that nobody can prove he used the stolen material doesn't really apply.
On January 7, 2016, Levandowski emailed Larry Page with a plea: “Chauffeur is broken,” he wrote, according to a document revealed during the civil suit. “We’re losing our tech advantage fast.” He offered to start a separate self-driving effort within Google but was shot down. A few weeks later, after allegedly downloading those 14,000 files, he resigned. “I want to be in the driver seat, not the passenger seat, and right now [it] feels like I’m in the trunk,” he told Page.
https://www.wired.com/story/anthony-levandowski-put-himself-...
> The car went onto a freeway, where it travelled past an on-ramp. According to people with knowledge of events that day, the Prius accidentally boxed in another vehicle, a Camry. A human driver could easily have handled the situation by slowing down and letting the Camry merge into traffic, but Google’s software wasn’t prepared for this scenario. The cars continued speeding down the freeway side by side. The Camry’s driver jerked his car onto the right shoulder. Then, apparently trying to avoid a guardrail, he veered to the left; the Camry pinwheeled across the freeway and into the median. Levandowski, who was acting as the safety driver, swerved hard to avoid colliding with the Camry, causing Taylor to injure his spine so severely that he eventually required multiple surgeries.
> The Prius regained control and turned a corner on the freeway, leaving the Camry behind. Levandowski and Taylor didn’t know how badly damaged the Camry was. They didn’t go back to check on the other driver or to see if anyone else had been hurt. Neither they nor other Google executives made inquiries with the authorities. The police were not informed that a self-driving algorithm had contributed to the accident.
> Levandowski, rather than being cowed by the incident, later defended it as an invaluable source of data, an opportunity to learn how to avoid similar mistakes. He sent colleagues an e-mail with video of the near-collision. ... He remained in his leadership role and continued taking cars on non-official routes.
From https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/did-uber-steal...
Here's a quote from the chapter 11 filing:
In addition, to the extent that any trade secrets were taken and used at Uber, those trade secrets did not come from Mr. Levandowski, but rather a different former Google employee. Indeed, as admitted in Uber’s public statements, Uber’s self-driving software—an area that Mr. Levandowski did not work on at Google or Uber—contained problematic functions that will require it to enter into a license agreement with Waymo for use of Waymo’s intellectual property. Upon information and belief, the Waymo Settlement, entered into after discovery of possible misconduct relating to Uber’s source code, settled issues relating to theft of trade secrets by individuals who are not Mr. Levandowski.
Also from the same article - "Just as important to Levandowski is shaping the public dialogue around an AI god. In its filing, Way of the Future says it hopes an active, committed, dedicated membership will promote the use of divine AI for the “betterment of society” and “decrease fear of the unknown.” “We’d like to make sure this is not seen as silly or scary. I want to remove the stigma about having an open conversation about AI, then iterate ideas and change people’s minds,” says Levandowski. “In Silicon Valley we use evangelism as a word for [promoting a business], but here it’s literally a church. If you believe in it, you should tell your friends, then get them to join and tell their friends.”
But WOTF differs in one key way to established churches, says Levandowski: “There are many ways people think of God, and thousands of flavors of Christianity, Judaism, Islam...but they’re always looking at something that’s not measurable or you can’t really see or control. This time it’s different. This time you will be able to talk to God, literally, and know that it’s listening.”
Levandowski says that like other religions, WOTF will eventually have a gospel (called The Manual), a liturgy, and probably a physical place of worship. None of these has yet been developed. Though the church was founded in 2015, as Backchannel first reported in September, the IRS documents show that WOTF remained dormant throughout 2015 and 2016, with no activities, assets, revenue, or expenses.
The religion’s 2017 budget, as supplied to the IRS, details $20,000 in gifts, $1,500 in membership fees, and $20,000 in other revenue. That last figure is the amount WOTF expects to earn from fees charged for lectures and speaking engagements, as well as the sale of publications. Levandowski, who earned at least $120 million from his time at Google and many millions more selling the self-driving truck firm Otto to Uber, will initially support WOTF personally. However, the church will solicit other donations by direct mail and email, seek personal donations from individuals, and try to win grants from private foundations.
Google and every Silicon Valley company provide bonuses to employees for creating patents(they do not verify if it's your actual work just patent away and bonuses are given). Thus and to me This dude is just doing what he saw while at Google and what it's culture (including Silicon Valley's) taught him.
Google going full force after him isn't surprising yet the hypocrisy of it all is disgusting!
This is gross misrepresentation of what happened. It’s not some smart, lone engineer leaving for competition and bringing some good ideas from previous employees with him.
It’s an executive (with a technical background, but still), paid insane amount of money, deciding to steal majority of trade secrets for an unreleased product, developed by thousands of people, just so he can sell it to a competitor for an obscene amount of money.
It’s not a little guy vs big corp. It’s a greedy and ruthless executive vs corporation.
It’s not reviewing pull requests and being nit picky about code quality. It’s running a huge org.
That's just asking to be sued.
In fact, the major requirement for him to be acquired by Uber was that they indemnify him. He knew he did something wrong.
What's the rule on this? two weeks? three months? two years?
In small companies, personal equipment might get used incidentally, but if you work for a company with a budget, their data shouldn't go on your machines.
Not only did Levandowski not to this, he:
- bulk downloaded these files near the end of his employment;
- was deleting them in the office with Uber’s due diligence team.
He may not have benefitted. Uber may not have. But he created this cloud of uncertainty by not doing the common sense thing.
My personal theory is that he wanted insurance in case he couldn’t recreate this later if he needed it and/or he felt like this stuff belonged to him because he created it. Even though it’s clearly work product belonging to your employer people get possessive about these things.
As for the criminal part, honestly I actually think that’s what this law is for: to criminalize the plundering of commercial IP by by bad actors and competitors.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/former-google-self-dr...
https://www.wired.com/story/anthony-levandowski-artificial-i...
The religion’s 2017 budget, as supplied to the IRS, details $20,000 in gifts, $1,500 in membership fees, and $20,000 in other revenue. That last figure is the amount WOTF expects to earn from fees charged for lectures and speaking engagements, as well as the sale of publications. Levandowski, who earned at least $120 million from his time at Google and many millions more selling the self-driving truck firm Otto to Uber, will initially support WOTF personally. However, the church will solicit other donations by direct mail and email, seek personal donations from individuals, and try to win grants from private foundations. https://www.wired.com/story/anthony-levandowski-artificial-i...
Not saying they aren't, I just never really heard it explicitly said so. Is this a common self perception within that region? What makes it so? Beyond a baseline of that most people consider themselves having integrity and decency.
On contrary, I do think that you put too much trust on trust.
>These people are the cancer of Silicon Valley that generally has integrity and decency in pursuing startup endeavors
The very same SV that has Airbnb, doordash, grubhub et all? give me a break
And no I don’t care if you’ve had use out of it or you feel like “it’s my property, I can do what I want with it”, which is an entirely self-serving rationalization that doesn’t stand up any sort of scrutiny.
Let's face it. It was all fun and games until silicon valley was the underdog. Now this place makes and inevitably breaks the world. As is natural, places of power will attract people of malice. It will bring out selfishness and pride from a fraction of any random group of people that are given this opportunity.
The undoing of any rebellion is the flawed belief that the rebels will continue to be the good guys because (a) they're young, (b) they are the oppressed or (c) because they stick to logical rational thought. This all works as long as they're the rebels. Once they're the power-weilders, the same people become the problem they tried to solve. Because lust for power, money and fame is inherent in most of us. What's happening in SV now is demonstration number N of this.
One should always indeed challenge those in power, if only because it leads to better outcomes for all.
Levandowski is morally bankrupt too — and sloppy when it came to covering his tracks — the fact that he’s a brilliant engineer doesn’t make his actions more palpable.
Both are bad people and I’m not comfortable giving a guy a pass just because he was smart. Ultimately, he was just as greedy as Holmes. He wasn’t satisfied with the nine figure payouts both from Google and Uber (and his Uber money could have exceeded ten figures depending on stock options) and had to go for even more.
Fuck that guy. Fuck Elizabeth Holmes too, but Fuck Levandowski.
But at least they are a smart engineer, unlike <some one else I do not know about>
Potential for malicious macros?
As if a filename extension means anything at all.
It's real but creates another document automatically saying "Hire me". That's malware.
https://ipfs.eternum.io/ipfs/Qmd9PTEtuSrKKtJQw36aNzpjJwZAdCd...
I have news for you. The file itself is real but it's also acting suspiciously like malware. (Opens a second document showing a "hire me!" message and downloading another file)
I was lucky to spin up a VM, open it and I saw that message.