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Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

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Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#161

Post by zimpenfish »

Nelson69 wrote: post #73
duxup wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not malicious but what he walked away with wasn't just Google's IP, I'm sure plenty of people working for / with him worked on that IP too... There is a certain amount of disregard for other people who want to make cool stuff too IMO.

He's cashed in on this theft to the tune of "$50m-$100m" what would it take to constitute mallace? Sure, he's not building war weapons or anything like that, but he stole the IP and he made an F * ton of money from it, specifically selling it to competitors. That seems like about the only malicious thing you could do with that IP, if you ask me. Being not malicious would be if it did that for free. What are the odds…

> commuting to some job

That'd be some interview. "Could you tell us about a time when you had to resolve a difficult issue? Say when you nicked IP from Google and had to pay $179M as restitution? And could you then explain why we should trust you within a hundred miles of our IP?"

Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#162

Post by dodobirdlord »

shuwusxuu2he wrote: post #152
dodobirdlord wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but I'm sure some prosecutor took a look at it and decided it wasn't worthwhile. People get killed in accidents all the time, and frequently nobody gets charged with anything. A person being killed in a car accident while jaywalking at night because the driver wasn't paying attention particularly well is a story as old as cars, and usually doesn't result in jail time. Turns out, people are legally allowed to dr…

Prosecutors, even high profile/positioned ones, have a finite amount of resources. At the end of the day it might be romantic to go after a megacorp but a prosecutor's job is to persue justice against criminals, you might get a few high profile executive types and justice for one family (if you're the type to consider beyond the defendant) but with those same resources and time you could probably lock up at least twe…

But moreover, it's totally unreasonable that anyone would have gone to jail as a result of this, except again, maybe the driver. The driver was literally being paid to monitor the vehicle. How is an argument that high profile executive types were engaging in criminal negligence going to fly, when the bar for legal driving is already that 1 person is in the car nominally paying attention?

Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#163

Post by dereksine »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #27
dereksine wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

..."Levandowski himself may not have to pay the money personally, as this sort of liability may fall to his employer depending on his contract or other legal quirks."

You can see immediately below that he personally filed for bankruptcy. Now when rich people do this it doesn't always mean the same thing as when ordinary people do it, but it seems unlikely that he would need to take that step if he had no liability.

Chapter 11 buys more time.

Don't forget he still has criminal charges pending: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-uber-self-drivin...

Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#165

Post by bogomipz »

throw03172019 wrote: post #41
zanek wrote: post #3

Levandowski just filed for bankruptcy saying he has less than $100M in assets . Does anyone know if he will only pay a percentage or is only delaying this by kicking the can down the road to another court ? I would be highly surprised if his employer (Uber) shouldered any of the this

Didn’t he make tens of millions at Google as an employee as well? That is a lot of money to blow through (plus) assuming a nice chunk of Uber stock from Otto.

How does an employee make tens of millions? Was he a very early employee or did Google acquire a company he founded?

Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#166

Post by bogomipz »

>"However, Levandowski personally filed today for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, stating that the presumptive $179M debt quite exceeds his assets, which he estimates at somewhere between $50M and $100M."

Could someone with a legal background say what this means in practical terms? Stating you have assets worth "between $50M and $100M" while declaring bankruptcy obviously looks absurd on it's face but I'm guessing there's much more to this?

Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#168

Post by engineeringwoke »

chongli wrote: post #136
jdhn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe for cases like this that involve literally millions of dollars, but it really helps normal people from becoming homeless if they fall on hard times for whatever reason. Source: Family members went through bankruptcy in Florida and were able to get back on their feet much quicker because their house couldn't be seized.

And even in this case. Does Anthony Levandowski deserve to become homeless and destitute for what he did? No. This is going to hurt him far, far more than what he did could ever have hurt Google. Yeah, maybe Google would have lost more than this on paper, but definitely not in terms of marginal utility. Google remains an extremely wealthy and powerful company and now Anthony is broke.

He should've gone to jail, like people are supposed to when they commit fraud.

Re: Anthony Levandowski ordered to pay $179M to Google

#169

Post by C1sc0cat »

archeantus wrote: post #103
brutopia wrote: post #99

Bit unrelated, but could somebody highlight the comma splices mentioned in the comments section? As a non-native english speaker, I can’t notice anything out of the ordinary.

“ However, Levandowski personally filed today for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, stating that the presumptive $179M debt quite exceeds his assets, which he estimates at somewhere between $50M and $100M.” I’m not an English expert, but I am a native speaker. Although the above sentence is understandable, when you look at it closer the sentence structure is a bit wonky. Anecdotally, I don’t like starting a sentence with “Howev…

Second comma could have been a - eg "assets - which he"

But I agree that there is nothing wrong with that sentence.

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