Google awarded $179m from former Uber exec over trade secrets theft
Anthony Levandowski, the former head of Uber’s self-driving unit, has been ordered to pay Google $179 million, after being accused of stealing trade secrets when he left Google’s self-driving subsidiary Waymo in 2016.
In a final ruling, issued on Wednesday, March 4, at the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco, Levandowski’s petition to dispute the original ruling was denied.
The ruling appears to be the final move in a legal battle that’s been raging since August 2019, when a California grand jury indicted Levandowski for stealing trade secrets relating to self-driving cars from Google.
Google alleged that Levandowski downloaded confidential engineering, manufacturing, and business documents from Google servers before resigning without notice in 2016.
Following his resignation, Levandowski founded his own self-driving vehicle start-up, Ottomotto, which was later bought out by Uber for a reported $680 million.
Then, according to Wednesday’s filing, in late March 2019, following several months of briefings, a court-appointed arbitration panel finally issued an interim award in Google's favour.
It found that Levandowski had indeed “violated his duty of loyalty and breached his employment contract with Google by misusing confidential information and other actions he took in connection with Google’s self-driving vehicle programme”. Later, in December 2019, the panel issued a unanimous final award in Google’s favour.
Levandowski’s recent attempt to vacate the award, based primarily on his claim that the panel had ‘penalised’ him for asserting his fifth amendment rights against self-incrimination, are “inconsistent with the narrowly limited grounds for judicial review for arbitration awards, and he misstates the record”.
“Accordingly, Levandowski’s petition to vacate the award is denied, and Google’s petition to confirm it is granted,” said the ruling.
According to several media reports, Levandowski, who helped pioneer Google’s work on self-driving vehicles, has now filed for bankruptcy protection.
Both Uber and Google have been contacted for comment.
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