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

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

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a few. Levandowski is in California, where they're making a pretty big effort to get nonviolent criminals out of the prison system.

It blows my mind that there are protestors at San Quentin agitating for prisoners to be released into the public when the prison is one of the biggest cohorts of COVID in the entire region. They literally let people walk out of prison and get on a public bus, after spendings months in close quarters amidst the worst outbreak in the Bay Area.

If only they had acted earlier - before keeping those folks in such close quarters during an epidemic.

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

#52
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean "confused." I think the supplier knew exactly what was happening and decided to let the cat out of the bag.

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.

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

#53
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said money can’t literally buy a get out of jail card?

When you say "literally" do you mean to imply he literally paid someone? That's quite implausible.

He can pay lawyers to make the arguments for delaying until after Covid. A public defender isn’t going to do that for you.

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

#54

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.

Yep, especially since Gmail also truncates signatures aggressively. They almost make it difficult to know if a person is representing an org, and instead just show what ever name they've decided is most appropriate :)

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

#55
post #33

More than the 18 month prison sentence, it would have been far better to punish him with life-long red mark on his career to never be able to found, or run a company and never be able to buy stock or any kind of a position in any company. Seems like 18 months will be spent plotting his next big thing and it’s rinse and repeat. Also put an upper limit to his wealth. Say total : $40K. And cancel his passport.

He was already sued into oblivion. What's left will be taken by the lawyers. He'll be lucky to have 500k - 5million after all this is said and done, and it will be very difficult for him to find employment into the future.

I agree that the comment above was advocating some pretty excessive measures but 500k-5M is a fair bit more than most folks end up having when they get to retirement.

He's not going to be unemployable - he'll be unemployable in a few specific sectors of tech, he can absolutely go out and get a "normie" job if he's got marketable skills.

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

#56

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.

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

#57

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…

The government has the freedom and jurisdiction to decide which resources are of such strategic importance as to give them extra protection.

It's not about protecting one company over the other. It's about protecting an industry against other super powers.

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

#58
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.

Probably a habit built up over time. You don't just go from upstanding guy to con man overnight.

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

#59

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 jail time), companies have zero motivation to publish.

Despite both forms of IP enjoying legal protections, there are many reasons to prefer trade secrets over patents or vice versa.

It's much much easier to accidentally lose trade secret protection by inadvertantly divulging those secrets, so in that sense patents are more "durable".

You also can't use trade secret protections to prevent reverse engineering, so any invention that's easily observable and reversible is not suitable for trade secret protection.

Trade secrets also can't be used to protect from independent invention, so if someone else discovers your trick, you have no recourse.

Conversely, trade secrets apply to things that cannot traditionally be patented. The classic example is, of course, the recipe for coke, as recipes in general are not patentable subject matter

Trade secrets also have no expiration date, hence again, Coke.

Obviously this is a deep well and I've only just barely scratched the surface.

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