Google, a former employee and the story of a trade secret theft

At six feet seven, Anthony Levandowski stood tall—literally and figuratively. The towering man became the undoubted pioneer of self-driving car technology and was the mastermind behind Google's automated car venture Waymo.

Levandowski was recruited by Google in 2007 after his self-driving motorcycle, Ghostrider, became the talk of the town even after failing miserably in a government-sponsored self-driving race. Charismatic and never media shy, the roboticist's quick rise to become one of the confidantes of Google co-founder Larry Page was never a surprise.

And, that's exactly why his fall from grace is nothing short of a thriller. 

The U.C. Berkeley-graduate engineer, who seldom stops talking about the power of technology to change the world, has now been slapped with charges of theft—of trade secrets from Google for ride-hailing startup Uber.  

Levandowski was hit with criminal charges on Tuesday alleging he stole trade secrets from Google's self-driving car project before he went to work at Uber. If convicted on the charges, Levandowski faces up to 10 years in prison and a penalty of $250,000 per violation, according federal prosecutors who announced the criminal indictment. Levandowski’s next court hearing is on September 4.

The modus operandi

Levandowski worked on the Waymo project from 2009 and was leader of the light-detecting and ranging (LiDAR) team when he resigned from Google without notice in January of 2016, according to the indictment. However, before he left Google, he downloaded and made an unauthorised transfer of more than 14,000 files to his personal laptop containing critical information about Google’s autonomous-vehicle research. 

Some of the files that Levandowski took from Google included private schematics for proprietary circuit boards and designs for Lidar, which are used in self-driving cars, reported The New York Times. 

Soon after, he founded a self-driving truck company that was acquired by Uber in 2017. 

Theft is not innovation

The theft allegations came out in a civil case in which Waymo accused Uber of stealing trade secrets. Waymo, now a unit at parent company Alphabet, had alleged that Uber conspired with Levandowski, whose downloaded files included circuit board schematics, instructions for installing and testing LiDAR, and an internal tracking document.

That case ended with a settlement between the two firms last year, with Uber giving Waymo $245 million worth of its stock. The event also led to the uneventful exit of Uber founder Travis Kalanick in 2017. Levandowski was also fired from Uber in May 2017 following the lawsuit.

However, things were far from settled as it appears. While there are no evidence to suggest that Google approached prosecutors to incriminate Levandowski, it is not unheard of in Silicon Valley for companies to trigger criminal investigations into competitors. Interestingly, the criminal charges against Levandowski from the US Attorney’s Office of Northern District of California mirror complaints made by Waymo in the 2018 lawsuit. 

“This case rehashes claims already discredited in a civil case that settled more than a year and a half ago,” Levandowski’s attorneys said in a statement to tech news portal Recode. “Anthony is innocent, and we look forward to proving it at trial.”

However, Tuesday's indictment shows both the civil and criminal cases were about LiDAR, the laser-based system critical to enabling autonomous cars to get a three-dimensional picture of its surroundings. "All of us have the right to change jobs, none of us has the right to fill our pockets on the way out the door," US Attorney David Anderson said in a release announcing 33 counts of theft and attempted theft of trade secrets. "Theft is not innovation."

Levandowski, on his part, dons many hats. He has also founded a religious organisation and named it 'Way of the Future'. According to Wired, the purpose is to “develop and promote the realisation of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence".

After the civil suit was settled, Levandowski founded a new company called Pronto.ai. However, following his indictment, Pronto.ai has informed that Levandowski will be replaced by Robbie Miller, chief safety officer. Interestingly, Miller is a former Uber manager and whistleblower who famously called out the ride-hailing company’s safety laxity while testing its autonomous vehicle, just days before an Uber vehicle killed a pedestrian in Arizona last March.