Anthony Levandowski, former engineer at Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and the center of a past lawsuit between Uber (NYSE: UBER) and Google's Waymo, was convicted of stealing trade secrets by U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco on Tuesday and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Levandowski also agreed to pay $756,499.22 to Waymo and a fine of $95,000.
Levandowski will not begin his sentence until the coronavirus pandemic has passed due to infection concerns. Alsup chose not to let Levandowski serve part of his sentence under house arrest, stating that it would set a bad precedent for other engineers who are tempted to steal and distribute trade secrets, deciding that, "prison time is the answer to that."
"Today marks the end of three and a half long years and the beginning of another long road ahead. I'm thankful to my family and friends for their continued love and support during this difficult time," Levandowski said in a statement after sentencing, quoted by TechCrunch.
Backstory
Levandowski was an engineer and a founding member of Google's self-driving car project, which at the time was named Project Chauffeur, that would become Alphabet's Waymo.
Levandowski eventually left Google and started the company autonomous car company Otto with three other former Google employees. Otto was then acquired by Uber (NYSE: UBER) several months later. Not too long after the acquisition, Google made two arbitration claims against Uber over its budding self-driving car unit, citing that the company was using Google's trade secrets.
Those claims evolved into a lawsuit between Waymo and Uber over theft of trade secrets and patent infringement. The trial resulted in a settlement where it was determined that Levendowski transferred more than 14,000 files from Google, including information like product designs, to his personal laptop before exiting the company. Uber also agreed not use Waymo's information in its self-driving unit.