Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 450 posts

Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed

#81

Post by cwhiz »

darkwizard42 wrote: post #68
breck wrote: post #26

Why do we have laws for trade secrets? Seems like that lowers wages and decreases innovation. Really bad for majority of people. I understand they are fantastic for minority of people who are shareholders, but are there contrarians who think we should do away with legal protections for them?

Not sure if this comment is sarcasm, but if we didn't attempt to reasonably protect trade secrets the opposite of what you are saying would happen. If I invest billions in a form of technology or a superior product and it can just walk out the door to any competitor, I actually have a perverse incentive to milk my existing products as much as possible and AVOID innovation due to the lack of return on it and the abili…

Patents exist.

Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed

#82

Post by blihp »

w0mbat wrote: post #50

This guy had such a sweet deal at Google originally, it staggers me that he'd go to these lengths to steal even more. He was getting a massive salarY, bonuses in the millions, and he had persuaded Google to pay him even more money through a side-hustle company of his while remaining an employee. Then he quits and steals their stuff.

For some people, it isn't ever about having enough. It's always about having more. It also might not have been entirely about the money: he could have craved recognition, more power or who knows what else.

Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed

#84

Post by [deleted] »

dantiberian wrote: post #52
codezero wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd agree with you, if I hadn't worked adjacent to the financial industry for a bit. There are a lot of companies with liberty in the name (not even just US based), and I've mixed some up, even on technical issues. Obviously the "name" isn't the issue, or maybe it is, it's possible they worked with this person in the past, and it never occurred to them to check the current employer, because it usually doesn't change…

I could imagine that after Levandowski left Waymo that his email was forwarded to a manager or peer. You could see how a supplier could accidentally pick corey@waymo.com instead of corey@uber.com when they type “Corey” into the email client.

[deleted]

Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed

#85

Post by 55555 »

enraged_camel wrote: post #76
oh_sigh wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was talking about his Google compensation which was reported to be approximately 170 million

If it's any consolation: the more money you have, the more painful a jail sentence, even a short one like this, is, because the opportunity cost is massive .

Wow. The opportunity cost of spending part of your life in prison is not measured in dollars. I mean, I guess Anthony might measure it in dollars, but that's really, really far gone.

Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed

#86

Post by api »

blihp wrote: post #82
w0mbat wrote: post #50

This guy had such a sweet deal at Google originally, it staggers me that he'd go to these lengths to steal even more. He was getting a massive salarY, bonuses in the millions, and he had persuaded Google to pay him even more money through a side-hustle company of his while remaining an employee. Then he quits and steals their stuff.

For some people, it isn't ever about having enough. It's always about having more. It also might not have been entirely about the money: he could have craved recognition, more power or who knows what else.

No, it's about dominance and winning. It isn't about the reward. It's about the game.

Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed

#88

Post by klipt »

CarelessExpert wrote: post #59
hannasanarion wrote: post #41

Why is the government throwing people in jail for leaking trade secrets? Trade secrets aren't supposed to have government protection, that's the entire point: they're risky. If you want a monopoly on your technology, you're supposed to file a patent. Trade secrets were invented as a riskier way to extend your monopoly by giving up government protection. If the government is going to give trade secrets the same protec…

> Trade secrets were invented as a riskier way to extend your monopoly by giving up government protection. You're definitely mistaken on that point. Trade secrets enjoy protection in the law, both in the US and worldwide: https://www.uspto.gov/ip-policy/trade-secret-policy > If the government is going to give trade secrets the same protection as patents (or even more, because patent infringement doesn't come with jai…

Pretty sure anyone could hire a few experts to duplicate the flavor of Coke exactly. Their moat is branding, partnerships and a huge distribution network, not some "secret recipe".

Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed

#89

Post by mayneack »

throwawaygh wrote: post #56
hannasanarion wrote: post #41

Why is the government throwing people in jail for leaking trade secrets? Trade secrets aren't supposed to have government protection, that's the entire point: they're risky. If you want a monopoly on your technology, you're supposed to file a patent. Trade secrets were invented as a riskier way to extend your monopoly by giving up government protection. If the government is going to give trade secrets the same protec…

Stealing, not leaking. It’s not like he was a whistleblower or something. Should he go to jail? Idk. But if stealing food from a grocery store can put you in jail, then a ten/hundred millionaire stealing IP should as well.

Should he go to jail? Idk. But stealing food from a grocery store isn't perfectly analogous to stealing IP. Bringing his knowledge to uber doesn't mean google can't use it. The same is true for digital piracy. Maybe it should be illegal, but it's not exactly the same as stealing an object.

Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed

#90

Post by stingrae »

sushshshsh wrote: post #65
Pxtl wrote: post #60

Oh. I hadn't been following the story and had assumed somebody was facing justice over the woman killed by Uber's unsafe self-driving car experiment. ... How silly of me.

You mean the one who was jaywalking and wasn't visible until a split second before she was tragically killed? Do we afford the same condolences to the tens of thousands of other traffic victims?

This is a very unbalanced idea of what happened. The Uber released video’s exposure was clearly adjusted to make it darker than reality. Also the sight of the “jaywalking” was shown clearly to be a place where people regularly crossed the road. There is a sidewalk that leads and ends right at that spot. So it is clearly a urban planning design issue.

This is not to say that Uber is criminally liable but that it isn’t as clear cut as you may want it to be.

Post reply on HN