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Things learned from Anthony Levandowski's deposition in Waymo vs. Uber

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Re: Things learned from Anthony Levandowski's deposition in Waymo vs. Uber

#51

Post by rhizome »

tinbad wrote: post #13
arkitaip wrote: post #10

Levandowski has absolutely tarnished his own reputation. Sooner or later he will be abandoned by Uber - how could they possibly trust him if his thieving goes back a decade? - and finding employment or trust in the industry is going to be extremely difficult.

If he really made $120m from Google alone, he probably thought he was safe by that point, I mean, he must have thought through this and bought himself a private island somewhere to go to when the shit was going to hit the fan..?

When "fsck you money" goes wrong.

Re: Things learned from Anthony Levandowski's deposition in Waymo vs. Uber

#52

Post by icedchai »

arkitaip wrote: post #10

Levandowski has absolutely tarnished his own reputation. Sooner or later he will be abandoned by Uber - how could they possibly trust him if his thieving goes back a decade? - and finding employment or trust in the industry is going to be extremely difficult.

Practically speaking, has enough money to sustain himself indefinitely. Why would he care?

Re: Things learned from Anthony Levandowski's deposition in Waymo vs. Uber

#53

Post by nostrademons »

zaphar wrote: post #48
djsumdog wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's written into most peoples' contracts (in a way that isn't always obvious) but if you spend time at home working on stuff that's unrelated and then leave and found a company, if your employer tries to convince a judge they own your "on your own time, unrelated work," good luck with them not looking like shitheads.

Google's employment onboarding makes this bit unambiguous. You are told from the outset that if you have any current side projects you need to declare them when hired. Google will then tell you whether you can continue them and still work there. You are also told that if you wish to start any side projects while at Google the online form to tell Google of your intentions is at such and such a link. After you submit s…

It was actually significantly more ambiguous when I worked there (2009-2014), and presumably was even moreso in 2007. IARC didn't even exist until I think 2013, and it wasn't an online form at the time I left - you emailed some contact person, they discussed it in a relatively opaque committee, and then got back to you after an inordinate length of time. They had the standard California IP contract at the time, i.e. company claims ownership over all IP except that done on your own time, using your own resources, on subjects unrelated to the company's lines of business.

That last clause was the source of all sorts of ambiguities, eg. Googlers who had written iPhone games were told (after the fact) that their work was owned by Google because Google+ might be getting into the games business. This was somewhat legally questionable on Google's part, and it was cases like this, probably combined with a few outright corporate theft cases like Lewandowski's, that led to the IARC process.

Re: Things learned from Anthony Levandowski's deposition in Waymo vs. Uber

#54

Post by jacquesm »

nostrademons wrote: post #53
zaphar wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's employment onboarding makes this bit unambiguous. You are told from the outset that if you have any current side projects you need to declare them when hired. Google will then tell you whether you can continue them and still work there. You are also told that if you wish to start any side projects while at Google the online form to tell Google of your intentions is at such and such a link. After you submit s…

It was actually significantly more ambiguous when I worked there (2009-2014), and presumably was even moreso in 2007. IARC didn't even exist until I think 2013, and it wasn't an online form at the time I left - you emailed some contact person, they discussed it in a relatively opaque committee, and then got back to you after an inordinate length of time. They had the standard California IP contract at the time, i.e.…

> This was somewhat legally questionable on Google's part

If it was as you describe it is at least despicable, whether it is legal or not is another matter but that's very very nasty.

Re: Things learned from Anthony Levandowski's deposition in Waymo vs. Uber

#55

Post by linkregister »

zaphar wrote: post #48
djsumdog wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's written into most peoples' contracts (in a way that isn't always obvious) but if you spend time at home working on stuff that's unrelated and then leave and found a company, if your employer tries to convince a judge they own your "on your own time, unrelated work," good luck with them not looking like shitheads.

Google's employment onboarding makes this bit unambiguous. You are told from the outset that if you have any current side projects you need to declare them when hired. Google will then tell you whether you can continue them and still work there. You are also told that if you wish to start any side projects while at Google the online form to tell Google of your intentions is at such and such a link. After you submit s…

Doesn't California state law invalidate a lot of this? I signed non-competes that come with a little clause at the end: "pretty much none of this is enforceable in California. We have to say this because California is making us."

Of course if you use company resources or IP you're out of luck.

Re: Things learned from Anthony Levandowski's deposition in Waymo vs. Uber

#56

Post by puzzle »

jacquesm wrote: post #54
nostrademons wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was actually significantly more ambiguous when I worked there (2009-2014), and presumably was even moreso in 2007. IARC didn't even exist until I think 2013, and it wasn't an online form at the time I left - you emailed some contact person, they discussed it in a relatively opaque committee, and then got back to you after an inordinate length of time. They had the standard California IP contract at the time, i.e.…

> This was somewhat legally questionable on Google's part If it was as you describe it is at least despicable, whether it is legal or not is another matter but that's very very nasty.

When I was ​at Google, I kept hearing that California laws in particular are not employee-friendly and that you should ask for an opinion from a personal lawyer.

As to why this hard stance, I always suspected that sweeping that kind of stuff under the rug would have opened the company to a bunch of annoying lawsuits from shareholders and/or ambulance chasers for something along the lines of "not enforcing the company's rights". All it would have taken was just one successful side project.

Also note that, even if the stance was "Google owns it by default", lots of projects were assigned back (https://opensource.google.com/docs/iarc/). The IARC process leaves an electronic trail showing that a project was subject to at least some kind of due diligence (even if it later pockets the employee a lot of money that at some point Google or shareholders could have very hypothetically fought in court for). Or, conversely, the lack of an application might shift the legal burden onto the employee that didn't declare everything as required. Again, the above was just all speculation on my part.

Re: Things learned from Anthony Levandowski's deposition in Waymo vs. Uber

#57

Post by nullnilvoid »

ziszis wrote: post #2

Waymo's allegations now go much deeper and further back than just Otto: * "Levandowski was deceiving Google almost from the moment it hired him to work on the Street View maps project back in 2007." * "Levandowski controlled a company called Dogwood Leasing that hired ex-Google contractor and 510 Systems engineer Asheem Linaval to use Google’s secrets to develop self-driving car technology." * "Levandowski founded ye…

If he was deceiving Google from the very beginning, why didn't Google find it out earlier and fired him? Google bought more than one companies he co-founded or was heavily involved with. How did not Google find that he was involved with these companies and there was obvious conflicts of interests there.

Re: Things learned from Anthony Levandowski's deposition in Waymo vs. Uber

#58

Post by wetherbeei »

Nelson69 wrote: post #34

What's Google's policy on side businesses? They're cool if you work on self-driving cars and start LIDAR and "self-driving truck" side projects? Did Levandowski have some sort of special pass due to the unicorn nature of his experience and expertise?

https://opensource.google.com/docs/iarc/

Re: Things learned from Anthony Levandowski's deposition in Waymo vs. Uber

#59

Post by pmorici »

jonathankoren wrote: post #47
ziszis wrote: post #2

Waymo's allegations now go much deeper and further back than just Otto: * "Levandowski was deceiving Google almost from the moment it hired him to work on the Street View maps project back in 2007." * "Levandowski controlled a company called Dogwood Leasing that hired ex-Google contractor and 510 Systems engineer Asheem Linaval to use Google’s secrets to develop self-driving car technology." * "Levandowski founded ye…

> * "Levandowski was deceiving Google almost from the moment it hired him to work on the Street View maps project back in 2007." I read this, and immediately wondered why Google didn't immediately fire him? Seriously. When you find out someone is taking your IP and using it for his own profit, you don't put the guy on a sensitive project. I don't care how talented he is, he couldn't be trusted.

That statement doesn't say anything about when Google became aware of what he was doing. It may well be that Google wasn't aware of the earlier scheming until many years later when they started investigating the bigger issues in this case.
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