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Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

nytimes.com

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Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#61

Post by kragen »

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #51
kragen wrote: post #44

"Theft of trade secrets" is how Silicon Valley was built. Fairchild was "theft of trade secrets" from Shockley; Intel was "theft of trade secrets" from Fairchild. When Camenzind left Signetics and designed the 555 (under contract to Signetics), he was "using trade secrets" of Signetics; in today's legal environment, they could have just ordered him to stick around as an employee and work on a less risky project. MOST…

There's an element of truth in what you are saying. But in this case Lewendowski didn't build the stolen technology. He misappropriated the work of other engineers at Google. It would be one thing if he just left with his own work. That would be more understandable.

I agree that Levandowski didn't invent everything he "stole", but this is not significant from the point of view of legal precedent — whether you write code at work or your coworker writes the code, the law considers it to belong to your employer — and some of the cases I mentioned above also included the departure of executives, not just engineers.

(Edited to clarify and correct spelling.)

Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#62

Post by paul7986 »

I use to feel bad for Google and wanted this thief to face justice. But umm he's just doing what he witnessed and was taught(told) to do while working for the big G.

Google blatantly steals IP from the biggest fish to the little dreamers they inspire and such is well documented. See this popular HN thread... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929

Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#63

Post by javert »

kragen wrote: post #44

"Theft of trade secrets" is how Silicon Valley was built. Fairchild was "theft of trade secrets" from Shockley; Intel was "theft of trade secrets" from Fairchild. When Camenzind left Signetics and designed the 555 (under contract to Signetics), he was "using trade secrets" of Signetics; in today's legal environment, they could have just ordered him to stick around as an employee and work on a less risky project. MOST…

> I live in a poor country which is poor mostly because the established economic powers are able to strangle new centers of wealth creation in the cradle, using the government and laws. Don't let that happen in your country.

Is there any country in the world that still prioritizes freedom over having a massive regulatory state? It would surprise me.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#64

Post by wp381640 »

kragen wrote: post #60
tw04 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Remember that "theft of trade secrets" is how Silicon Valley was built. Fairchild was "theft of trade secrets" from Shockley; Intel was "theft of trade secrets" from Fairchild. When Camenzind left Signetics and designed the 555 (under contract to Signetics), he was "using trade secrets" of Signetics Do you have proof of this? Claiming all those companies were founded by people who stole confidential documentation fr…

They were the key engineers of those companies, which were (in the first two cases) the only ones in the industry at the time; their heads contained nothing but (what today we would call) "trade secrets".

Levandowski ripped entire archives of files and plans

Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#65

Post by jeremysalwen »

cletus wrote: post #53

The level of greed, hubris and stupidity of some people never ceases to amaze me. Levandowski was paid a bonus of $120 million while at Google, which is more money than any reasonable person will need for several lifetimes. This was actually a running joke at Google (while I was still there) to describe $120M as "1 Levadownski". Like Sundar one year was described as earning "only 1.7 Levadownskis" (he got paid $200M…

Another unit conversion:

    1 Levandowski = 1.3 Rubins [1]
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/25/18023364/google-an]dy-ru...

Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#66

Post by cortesoft »

kragen wrote: post #60
tw04 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Remember that "theft of trade secrets" is how Silicon Valley was built. Fairchild was "theft of trade secrets" from Shockley; Intel was "theft of trade secrets" from Fairchild. When Camenzind left Signetics and designed the 555 (under contract to Signetics), he was "using trade secrets" of Signetics Do you have proof of this? Claiming all those companies were founded by people who stole confidential documentation fr…

They were the key engineers of those companies, which were (in the first two cases) the only ones in the industry at the time; their heads contained nothing but (what today we would call) "trade secrets".

If Levandowski had only taken the secrets that were in his head, he would have been fine. He took actual code written by other people.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#67

Post by kragen »

javert wrote: post #63
kragen wrote: post #44

"Theft of trade secrets" is how Silicon Valley was built. Fairchild was "theft of trade secrets" from Shockley; Intel was "theft of trade secrets" from Fairchild. When Camenzind left Signetics and designed the 555 (under contract to Signetics), he was "using trade secrets" of Signetics; in today's legal environment, they could have just ordered him to stick around as an employee and work on a less risky project. MOST…

> I live in a poor country which is poor mostly because the established economic powers are able to strangle new centers of wealth creation in the cradle, using the government and laws. Don't let that happen in your country. Is there any country in the world that still prioritizes freedom over having a massive regulatory state? It would surprise me.

Governments do not prioritize the freedom of their subjects; it's contrary to the incentives of everyone in the government. People win freedom by limiting the powers governments have over them.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#68

Post by oneepic »

Can someone explain the difference between this situation and the following situation:

- engineer at Company A has expertise in a certain field, and is really, really good at solving problems in this field and knowing what to do next at any point in time. They bring quality to Company A's systems. - engineer moves to Company B to do the same kind of work, and uses their expertise to bring Company B's systems up to high quality as well - Company A says that this engineer must have stolen trade secrets.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#70

Post by kragen »

cortesoft wrote: post #66
kragen wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were the key engineers of those companies, which were (in the first two cases) the only ones in the industry at the time; their heads contained nothing but (what today we would call) "trade secrets".

If Levandowski had only taken the secrets that were in his head, he would have been fine. He took actual code written by other people.

> If Levandowski had only taken the secrets that were in his head, he would have been fine.

Kai-Fu Lee wasn't. Evan Brown wasn't (edited to clarify: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/08/12/alcatel_owns_us_emp...). Don't be so quick to fall prey to the Just World Fallacy, assuming that bad precedents will never be applied against good people.

Remember, too, that the founders of Fairchild and of Intel had lots of knowledge in their heads that had been discovered by their left-behind coworkers at Shockley and Fairchild. They probably had documents in their homes — by accident if nothing else, if the history of recovered source code printouts from that epoch is anything to go by — but because there was no prosecution to find out about it, we'll probably never know.

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