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posted by janrinok on Tuesday April 21 2020, @07:16PM   Printer-friendly
from the hung-out-to-dry dept.

Uber accuses Levandowski of fraud, refuses to pay $179M Google judgment:

Uber says it shouldn't be on the hook for a massive $179 million judgment owed to Google by Uber's former star engineer, Anthony Levandowski. Uber made that argument in a legal filing last week to a federal bankruptcy court in California. Uber's brief portrays the situation differently than Levandowski, who told the court last month that Uber was legally obligated to pay the award.

Levandowski joined Uber in 2016 after almost a decade at Google, where he had been a leading self-driving engineer. Uber bought Levandowski's months-old self-driving startup Otto for hundreds of millions of dollars, intending to make Levandowski and his team the core of Uber's fledgling self-driving car project.

But things went sour fast. Google sued Uber, alleging that Levandowski had downloaded thousands of confidential documents before his departure and had taken them to his new job. Fearing criminal prosecution for trade secret theft—fears that proved justified—Levandowski invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify during the civil trial between Google and Uber.

Uber fired Levandowski and settled with Google. But Google continued to pursue Levandowski in arbitration, winning a $179 million award. Levandowski argues that Uber has an obligation to pay the judgment on his behalf under an indemnification deal Levandowski negotiated as part of the 2016 acquisition of his company.

But in its latest legal filing, Uber argues that it doesn't owe Levandowski anything because Levandowski used fraud to induce Uber to sign the indemnification agreement.

Previously:


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by darkfeline on Wednesday April 22 2020, @05:09AM

    by darkfeline (1030) on Wednesday April 22 2020, @05:09AM (#985680) Homepage

    Because there's nothing wrong with:

    1. Person works at a company on X.
    2. Person disagrees with company management/priorities/whatever but still loves/believes in X.
    3. Person starts their on company on X.

    Non-compete agreements are not valid in California.

    What is wrong is:

    2a. Person steals confidential documents from company before leaving.

    I believe there are a decent number of people who leave Google to work on similar things at startups, so probably they had some eyes on it, but not a dedicated investigation.

    If I remember correctly, Google only pounced after leaked documents that showed that Uber had suspiciously similar technology that prompted the lawsuit and discovery. Through legal discovery, it was found that Uber indeed had stolen goods.

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