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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

#211

Post by dang »

nwsm wrote: post #81
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…

>Engineers create wealth. Lawyers and investors just compete to privatize it. That's a really naive and pretentious opinion

Ok, but please don't attack others or call names in arguments or post unsubstantive comments here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#212

Post by evanweaver »

martin1975 wrote: post #203
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…

Not sure how true this is, but I heard Oracle "ripped" off Sybase's code base at some early point... Where's Sybase now and where's Oracle, eh? :) edit: quoted "ripped off" due to correction from response, it was a legal deal.

You mean the joint venture between Microsoft and Sybase that led to SQL Server? This was legal, soup to nuts.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#213

Post by cortesoft »

vonmoltke wrote: post #149
kragen wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 kno…

> Kai-Fu Lee wasn't. Microsoft sued Google in civil court over a non-compete agreement, not theft. The settlement allowed Lee to keep his job, so other than five months of anxiety I'm not sure how he wasn't "fine". Levandowski is being charged with 33 counts in a criminal indictment. These cases are not even in the same ballpark. > Evan Brown wasn't. I don't know who that is, and there are apparently too many notable…

Yeah, all I found was the football player... no idea who they are talking about.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#214

Post by AnimalMuppet »

kragen wrote: post #124
pcwalton wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So this movement toward resolving such conflicts in the courts, instead of by companies competing to out-innovate one another, is very troubling. A lot of the things you cite were actually fought out in the courts. Motorola sued MOS Technology [1]. AMD and Intel have been in constant legal battles since their inception. The complicated question of Unix ownership started the famous SCO-Linux litigation. This isn't a…

Do you think MOStek would have been able to survive in today's legal environment? I don't think so, and that's what worries me. The SCO-Linux litigation wasn't complicated. It was just fraud on SCO's part, under copyright law that was well-established at the time. With the Google/Oracle precedent in place, SCO would probably win. I agree that Levandowski, like weev, is profoundly unsympathetic, but we can't let that…

The Google-Oracle precedent is not actually relevant to SCO v IBM, because IBM didn't re-implement an interface copyrighted by SCO.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#215

Post by ksherlock »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #158
tyingq wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't a conviction open him up to a more costly civil suit? Harder to defend a civil suit if you're guilty in a related criminal charge.

Maybe so. At the time, everyone wondered why Google did not sue him, just Uber. Now I wonder if Google's legal team wasn't already in touch with the FBI/US attorney's office. It might be that the reason why they didn't pursue him in civil court was to leave the way open for the criminal procedure to blaze the trail. That would be sick, if so.

I got the impression that Google couldn't sue him, per se, because their employee arbitration requirements were working against them in this case.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#216

Post by dang »

paul7986 wrote: post #110
paul7986 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But his former employer is no different as Google blatantly steals IP themselves and gets caught in the process! See this popular HN thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929 You want to see him strung up for ripping off a company whose does the same thing and he probably witnessed and was taught to do it there(directly or indirectly).

Hmm no one answers why they are down voting something on topic here. Those who downvote this are doing so because You don't believe Google does exactly what Anthony did? That Google is a company who does no evil? What I'm saying is relevant and truthful and as noted clearly well documented!

Since your first comment didn't get downvoted, it's likely because you're repeating the same comment multiple times. Repetition lowers signal/noise ratio, so please don't.

It may also be because your comments contain grand claims and high indignation without much information. That doesn't mean you're wrong, of course, but given that everyone's priors here are formed by past internet discussion, it does increase the likelihood, and comments that fit that description tend to get downvoted.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#217

Post by dang »

ssnistfajen wrote: post #180
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…

>"Theft of trade secrets" is how Silicon Valley was built. Yet this sort of behaviour ceases to be described as individual acts of "greed" and "lack of ethics" when it's people from a certain country doing it. At that point it turns into "it's in their culture" and "we need to get rid of them". Hypocrisy and double standards are America's favourite pastime activities.

Nationalistic slights aren't ok here, so please don't post them.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#218

Post by AnimalMuppet »

kragen wrote: post #126
amyjess wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not such a favorable outcome for engineers It's a favorable outcome for people who want stability. There is huge value in knowing that you're not going to get fired unless you do something actively malicious. Some people aren't interested in climbing, have poor interviewing skills, and don't want to deal with the cognitive overhead of learning a different company's tech stack every two years. Plus, most compan…

I wasn't talking about a situation where the company can't fire you . I was talking about a situation where you can't quit the company . If the company has a credible legal case against any prior employee who works for a competitor, then firing you ends your career . That makes your job less secure, not more.

Only in a very small industry.

If I work in medical x-ray machines, say, when I quit, I don't go to another medical x-ray company. I can still work in embedded systems, though - it's a really big world out there.

Your argument works a bit better for Shockley and Fairchild, because semiconductors was not a big world then. And it perhaps works for Levandowski today, because self-driving cars skills aren't super portable to other industries. I could see some market for his skills in more general robotics, though.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#219

Post by denzil_correa »

tryitnow wrote: post #207

I would have a lot more sympathy for Levandowski if he had taken trade secrets and created his own company. But he didn't take the engineer/entrepreneur route. He took the corporate espionage route and just stole stuff from one company so that another company would profit, in the process further enriching himself. At one point he was a good engineer. Then he became just another greedy executive.

> But he didn't take the engineer/entrepreneur route. He took the corporate espionage route and just stole stuff from one company so that another company would profit, in the process further enriching himself.

Levandowski actually had his own startup Otto which was acquired by Uber.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

#220

Post by khuey »

ryanmercer wrote: post #157
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…

>"Theft of trade secrets" is how Silicon Valley was built. And reverse engineering, for example - IBM PC compatible via Corona Data Systems, Eagle Computer and Handwell Corporation - VTech clones of the Apple II ROMs for the Laser 128

Reverse engineering is a) legal if done properly and b) not even possible here since Waymo's cars aren't for sale.
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