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A cybersecurity firm hired by Uber found that Anthony Levandowski retained confidential information from Alphabet/Google after leaving the company:
A key document in Alphabet's legal battle against Uber reveals that a former Alphabet executive had a trove of data on Alphabet's self-driving car technology and accessed some of the files after he left the company.
The document outlines operational details of a startup founded by Anthony Levandowski, who was a lead engineer in Alphabet's self-driving car division. Uber commissioned the report in March 2016 specifically to discover if Levandowski had any confidential information from his former employer, Alphabet.
Levandowski's startup, Otto, was soon acquired by Uber, and he was put in charge of its budding self-driving department.
Levandowski and his co-founder Lior Ron had images of Alphabet's self-driving car components on his phone and repeatedly discussed deleting or actually deleted "potentially relevant" files from his personal devices, the report revealed.
It does caution, however, that some of these files may have been deleted in good faith so that neither Ron nor Levandowski retained any confidential information before leaving Alphabet and selling their company to Uber. In the same breath, the report, conducted by cybersecurity firm Stroz Friedberg, also said they were both still deleting files after they became aware they the firm would be looking through their personal devices.
The report does not indicate whether or not Uber used any trade secrets carried over from Google. That could be the key to getting a multi-billion dollar payout.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 04 2017, @08:51PM
If a Google employee leaves a yellow Google bike unsecured on the sidewalk (but away from Google/Alphabet's locations/properties) in Mountain View, is it OK for me (not a Google employee) to hop on and ride it somewhere?