Ex-Uber engineer sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing driverless car secrets from Google
A star engineer who admitted stealing self-driving car secrets from Google has been sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Anthony Levandowski, who helped found Google's self-driving car project, now known as Waymo, pleaded guilty to downloading documents containing data about the company's work and accessing one of them after he had left to found his own trucking startup.
Sentencing him in a San Francisco court, judge William Alsup said he was imposing prison time as a deterrent.
The engineer's legal team had pushed for a fine, 12 months home confinement and 200 hours of community service, but the judge said this would mean "a green light to every future brilliant engineer to steal trade secrets. Prison time is the answer to that."
The enforcement of his sentence has been delayed because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Speaking in court Mr Levandowski apologised to his former colleagues and said he had "come to terms" with his actions in the three and a half years since.
"I want to take this time to apologise to my colleagues at Google for betraying their trust, and to my entire family for the price they have paid and will continue to pay for my actions," he said.
An early star in the self-driving car scene, Mr Levandowski pushed for Google to develop the technology but later became disillusioned, leaving in early 2016 to start trucking company Otto, which was bought by Uber less than eight months later.
Waymo sued Uber, a case which was settled in 2018, with Uber paying out $245m (£187m) in equity and agreeing not to use its technology.
Uber had signed an indemnification agreement with Mr Levandowski, forcing it to pay his legal fees, but has refused to pay a $179m debt he owes to the Google spin-out, a consequence of separate legal action relating to his departure.
In a new lawsuit filed on Tuesday Mr Levandowski argued that Uber should pay this money on his behalf. He also wants payouts from Uber Freight, the division founded after the company acquired Otto.
In a statement Waymo called his actions "enormously disruptive and harmful", and "a betrayal".
A spokeswoman said: "We echo Assistant US Attorney Katherine Wawrzyniak’s sentiment that this theft 'erases the contributions of many, many other people that have also put their blood, sweat and tears into this project that makes a safer self-driving car.'
"Judge Alsup’s decision today to sentence Levandowski to 18 months in prison for stealing trade secrets from us represents a win for trade secret laws that promote cutting-edge technology development.”
