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A former Google engineer has been sentenced to 18 months in jail after pleading responsible to stealing commerce secrets and techniques earlier than becoming a member of Uber’s effort to construct robotic autos for its ride-hailing service.
The sentence handed down Tuesday by US District Judge William Alsup got here greater than 4 months after former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski reached a plea settlement with the federal prosecutors who introduced a legal case towards him final August.
Levandowski, who helped steer Google’s self-driving automotive venture earlier than touchdown at Uber, was additionally ordered to pay greater than $850,000 (roughly Rs. 6.36 crores).
Alsup had taken the weird step of recommending the Justice Department open a legal investigation into Levandowski whereas presiding over a high-profile civil trial between Uber and Waymo, a by-product from a self-driving automotive venture that Google started in 2007 after hiring Levandowski to be a part of its group.
Levandowski finally turned disillusioned with Google and left the corporate in early 2016 to begin his personal self-driving truck firm, known as Otto, which Uber finally purchased for $680 million (roughly Rs. 5,094 crores).
Before leaving Google, although, Levandowski downloaded a trove of Google’s self-driving automotive expertise, leading to him going through 33 counts of mental property theft. He wound up pleading responsible to one depend, culminating in Tuesday’s sentencing.
The accusations turned Levandowski, as soon as extremely regarded for his early inroads into self-driving vehicles, right into a infamous determine “virtually synonymous with greed run amok in Silicon Valley,” his own lawyers acknowledged in court documents filed last week.
The lawyers argued Levandowski deserved some leniency because there was never any evidence that he used Google’s trade secrets while overseeing Uber’s self-driving car division. He lost that job in 2017 while asserting his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when Uber was still defending itself against Waymo’s lawsuit.
Uber settled its case with Waymo for $245 million (roughlyy Rs. 1,835 crores) a few days into a trial that featured its former CEO, Travis Kalanick, speaking about some of his discussions with Levandowski about the ride-hailing service’s desire to win the race to build self-driving cars.
Levandowski, 40, faced a maximum prison sentence of 10 years and a $250,000 (roughly Rs. 1.87 crores) fine. Besides sentencing Levandowski to 18 months in prison, Alsup fined him $95,000 (roughly Rs. 71,00,000) and ordered him to pay Waymo $756,499 (roughly Rs. 5.66 crores) to reimburse the company for the costs it incurred in helping the government with its investigation.
It appears uncertain whether Levandowski will be able to make the payments. He filed for bankruptcy earlier this year after another court upheld an arbitration ruling requiring him to pay Google $179 million (roughly Rs. 1,349 crores), most of which consisted of a bonus he received for his work on self-driving cars.
In its victim statement, Waymo told Alsup that Levandowski’s “misconduct was enormously disruptive and harmful to Waymo, constituted a betrayal, and the financial effects would likely have been even more severe had it gone undetected.”
In documents arguing why Levandowski deserved prison time, US Attorney David Anderson called his theft a “brazen and shocking” act that seemed driven by ego as much as greed.
“Levandowski’s actions suggest he wanted to be seen as the singular inventor of the self-driving car, the way Alexander Graham Bell is credited with inventing the telephone,” Anderson wrote.
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