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Levandowski agrees to plea deal over Google secrets

reuters.com

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Re: Levandowski agrees to plea deal over Google secrets

#81

Post by earthtourist »

x0x0 wrote: post #79
earthtourist wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not "stolen" but copied. Google was not deprived of anything whatsoever.

No, exclusivity of the inventions and knowledge was a -- perhaps the -- key piece of value they held.

Claiming that exclusivity is they key value is ludicrous.

The key value of autonomous vehicle IP is the ability to autonomously drive vehicles. Unless you're a patent troll.

In this case, the IP was never utilized in the marketplace against them, so they suffered no significant amount of damage.

It's reasonable that they sued to stop the use of their illegally copied IP. It's reasonable that he's punished. But it should be proportionate to the damage, which was minimal.

Re: Levandowski agrees to plea deal over Google secrets

#82

Post by x0x0 »

earthtourist wrote: post #81
x0x0 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, exclusivity of the inventions and knowledge was a -- perhaps the -- key piece of value they held.

Claiming that exclusivity is they key value is ludicrous. The key value of autonomous vehicle IP is the ability to autonomously drive vehicles. Unless you're a patent troll. In this case, the IP was never utilized in the marketplace against them, so they suffered no significant amount of damage. It's reasonable that they sued to stop the use of their illegally copied IP. It's reasonable that he's punished. But it sho…

That's similarly ludicrous.

Autonomous vehicle IP is enormously more valuable if Google is the sole supplier. The value to Google is significantly less if Google plus multiple competitors have it.

Your claim basically devolves to no harm, no foul, and that's not how our legal system generally works. The attempted theft was of great value.

Re: Levandowski agrees to plea deal over Google secrets

#83

Post by heavenlyblue »

battery_cowboy wrote: post #3
foolfoolz wrote: post #2

great example of how white collar crime does not get punished. “no more than 30 months” for a theft implicated at multi-billion dollar values. that’s even less with good behavior credit

I take a different lesson: when a large company is affected, the small guy gets up to 30 months. When a small-time engineer gets his idea stolen by a big company in a similar way, they have zero recourse. To be clear, I think both should be punished, but the large corp stealing ideas NEVER will.

Well, I would like to agree with you, but unfortunately only larger companies have the resource and willingness to actually build the necessary infrastructure to prove someone stealing an idea

Re: Levandowski agrees to plea deal over Google secrets

#84

Post by heavenlyblue »

saghm wrote: post #49
sytelus wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm against this barbaric tradition of putting people in cages for whatever XYZ crimes. I think the isolation of the rest of the society from the criminals is essential but should be done in a much more humane way. For instance, prisons should be a place to learn and develop one's mind with libraries, documentaries, education and tools of creation but still making sure the person cannot contact the rest of the societ…

> For example, a "prison town" may have cafes, restaurants, theaters etc with everything being run by this isolated community which is not allowed to be in contact with the rest What happens if someone commits a crime in a prison town? Double secret prison?

No, you send them to solitary confinement, just as they do in prison?

Re: Levandowski agrees to plea deal over Google secrets

#85

Post by heavenlyblue »

saghm wrote: post #51
earthtourist wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question in criminal cases should be: how many people's lives were hurt by the crime, and how severely? In this case, no one's life was the slightest bit injured. Uber is most likely too incompetent to be a real threat. Waymo has undoubtedly advanced far from the versions of everything that he copied illegally. It won't damage them at all. If anything, the lawsuit and criminal case were probably more damaging to…

> Uber is most likely too incompetent to be a real threat I don't necessarily disagree with all of your comment, but I feel like incompetence should not be a factor in determining punishment severity. Being unprofitable should not be a valid defense for illegal behavior.

It’s like justifying sexual harassment by being bad at sex

Re: Levandowski agrees to plea deal over Google secrets

#86

Post by goatherders »

goatherders wrote: post #42
irjustin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue the opposite that this was extremely expensive for Uber. The legal nightmare which resulted a loss in 0.34% of equity and combined with having to throw away whatever they had[0] before as part of the deal with Google is not cheap at all. Anecdotally, I have engineering friends on the Uber self driving team and they talk about how they are just starting over again and how far behind they are as a result of i…

Thanks for sharing.

Downvoted for having manners. Lol. Dont ever change, HN.

Re: Levandowski agrees to plea deal over Google secrets

#87

Post by earthtourist »

x0x0 wrote: post #82
earthtourist wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claiming that exclusivity is they key value is ludicrous. The key value of autonomous vehicle IP is the ability to autonomously drive vehicles. Unless you're a patent troll. In this case, the IP was never utilized in the marketplace against them, so they suffered no significant amount of damage. It's reasonable that they sued to stop the use of their illegally copied IP. It's reasonable that he's punished. But it sho…

That's similarly ludicrous. Autonomous vehicle IP is enormously more valuable if Google is the sole supplier. The value to Google is significantly less if Google plus multiple competitors have it. Your claim basically devolves to no harm, no foul, and that's not how our legal system generally works. The attempted theft was of great value.

Our legal system does usually involve "proving damages".

Obtaining autonomous vehicle IP is not equivalent to having autonomous vehicle product in the market.

As an example: Boeing could almost certainly publish all of the IP for the 787 jet and not risk spawning a single legitimate competitor. Very few organizations in the world could do anything with it.

What's truly valuable to a Google or Boeing is their financial, engineering, manufacturing, and operations resources. And other less tangible things.

Which is why severe punishment for illegally copying IP doesn't make a lot of sense. Yes, it should be illegal and should be stopped, but it's not that big a deal in most cases.

It just seems like a big deal because "tHey StolE tHe SeCreT cOdEs!" as if it's a James Bond movie.

It's a case of confusing the golden goose with the golden eggs.

Re: Levandowski agrees to plea deal over Google secrets

#88

Post by sschueller »

goatherders wrote: post #4

Even if they dont "use" anything he stole, 30 months of someone else's life in jail is a zero price to pay for Uber to get even a small amount of competitive knowledge. Even something like an internal calendar of expected timelines would be super useful and cant be unseen.

Let's also not forget that Uber got away with killing Elaine Herzberg. "Move fast, break things"

Re: Levandowski agrees to plea deal over Google secrets

#89

Post by autonoshitbox »

garrettgrimsley wrote: post #80
autonoshitbox wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so we're clear who this commenter is: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/garrett-grimsley-north-carolina...

I had time to read the US Sentencing Guidelines cover to cover during my period of incarceration. If you don't trust my numbers then feel free to check the USSG for yourself, they're taken directly from the sources that I listed. That article refers to me, but you'd learn more about who this commenter is by reading my comment history (or asking me directly, I'm right here) instead of only that news story.

No doubt your numbers are accurate.
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