Things learned from Anthony Levandowski's deposition in Waymo vs. Uber(spectrum.ieee.org) |
Things learned from Anthony Levandowski's deposition in Waymo vs. Uber(spectrum.ieee.org) |
* "Levandowski was deceiving Google almost from the moment it hired him to work on the Street View maps project back in 2007."
* "Levandowski controlled a company called Dogwood Leasing that hired ex-Google contractor and 510 Systems engineer Asheem Linaval to use Google’s secrets to develop self-driving car technology."
* "Levandowski founded yet another startup, Odin Wave, feeding it confidential lidar technology ... renaming the company Tyto, to hide his involvement."
Involvement is dealt with in the shareholder registry, not in the company name. Neither 'Odin Wave' nor 'Tyto' have any direct visual resemblance to "Levandowski', the fact that 'Odin Wave' is a partial anagram of "Levandowski" isn't reason enough to suspect involvement by any other person. (Such as Dwain Evo...).
If I were looking at this sort of thing I'd start with the cap table and look for direct or indirect participation.
I can imagine it's hard to get this kind of info, it's not that cap tables are public and sometimes they don't even exist at all, especially if there's no investors involved.
Another data point would be the registered officer(s)/manager(s) with the secretary of state, but removing himself from it would achieve the same without having to change the company name, unless he then started a company with the same name?
But yeah, I also can't see how changing a name is hiding involvement...
But I'd also suggest that setting up small companies isn't THAT much work. Funneling other people's designs to those companies isn't THAT much work either.
Surely, the scheming took time and effort and I'm not saying he wasn't working hard. But the scheming described doesn't exactly sound like a superhuman feat for the ages.
I read this, and immediately wondered why Google didn't immediately fire him? Seriously. When you find out someone is taking your IP and using it for his own profit, you don't put the guy on a sensitive project. I don't care how talented he is, he couldn't be trusted.
If he'd been talking to somebody about custom GaInAs photosensor ICs, that would indicate a more advanced technology.
[1] http://www.ait.ac.at/fileadmin/mc/digital_safety_security/do...
If I were more conspiracy-minded, I'd think they let Otto happen in order to feed a poison pill to Uber... In reality, I think they were just complacent, but still :\
Well, Uber is running TV ads urging people to "get your side hustle on" [1], so at least he ended up at the right place.
That would be a very bad strategy if true so I highly doubt it. IANAL, but I believe under estoppel Google's knowledge of Levandowski's activity and implicit permission to continue would forfeit Google's right to sue later. Likely as soon as they came to know about it they took immediate action to prevent him from taking this defense.
Of course there is a pending civil suit from Waymo but what are the damages? Can't just make up a number based on the potential of self-driving cars and right now they are a mere money sink.
Having a ton of money means you don't have to worry about food, transport, or housing. In no way does it scratch the itch to build and sell cool new stuff.
Did Levandowski have some sort of special pass due to the unicorn nature of his experience and expertise?
"Uber's self-driving car boss, Anthony Levandowski, is stepping aside amid legal fight with Waymo"
http://www.businessinsider.com/anthony-levandowski-no-longer...
However, to simplify, I think the biggest lesson learned is:
When you create a product at a company and use the company's resources, the IP belongs to the company. If you're going branch out and work on a related product, you better understand the legal issues first.
Also, stealing is bad.
I mean, this should be pretty obvious to anyone who has so much as had a passing glance on their employment contract. I doubt very much that Levandowski didn't know this could put him in trouble.