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.

> 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.

https://www.wired.com/story/anthony-levandowski-artificial-i...

Potential for malicious macros?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

>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

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.