Google Wins Rs 1300 Crore Lawsuit Against Ex-Employee Charged With Stealing Tech Secrets

Google has finally won a near 3-year old lawsuit against a former employee charged for stealing the company¡¯s secrets. Anthony Levandowski, who was held responsible for trading Google¡¯s self-driving car secrets with Uber Technologies, will have to pay $179 million to Google. Not so surprisingly, Levandowski has filed for bankruptcy.

Once a star engineer working with Google¡¯s Waymo, Levandowski went on to develop his own autonomous vehicle startup by the name of Otto, which was later acquired by Uber Technologies in its endeavours to produce self-driving vehicles. Google then charged Uber for stealing its technology secrets in 2017, claiming that its technology formed the basis of Uber¡¯s self-driving cars.

It wasn¡¯t just a made up claim. Levandowski was accused of downloading around 14,000 files of Waymo¡¯s technology secrets involving LIDAR technology, circuit board designs, and testing documentation, right before he left the company. He even reformatted his company-issued laptop after downloading the files to remove any traces of this activity.

Anthony Levandowski (Representative Image: Reuters)

Using these technological developments of Waymo, Levandowski then spear-headed his stint at Uber¡¯s autonomous vehicle division. Noticing the backbone of these vehicles to be the technology developed by Anthony during his time at Waymo, Alphabet, Google¡¯s parent arm filed a lawsuit against Uber Technologies for stealing its trade secrets.

With lawsuit finally giving way to a decision, Levandowski has been fined a penalty of $179 million (Rs 1312 crore). On Wednesday, Levandowski filed for bankruptcy citing a lack of assets amounting to the penalty. "Levandowski personally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, stating that the presumptive $179 million debt quite exceeds his assets, which he estimates at somewhere between $50 million and $100 million," a report by TechCrunch mentions.