[EDIT: NOTE BELOW](1) Levandowsky took information from google in some kind of physical way (files on a thumb drive, network transfer etc), it doesn't count if he just took the files by "memorizing" them in his brain
(2) The information that was stole was secret, and highly beneficial to google/waymo
(3) Levandowsky used the information that he stole to influence designs at uber, and specific uber designs can be traced back to information in those docs
Proving these 3 things in a civil case is tricky, that is why waymo is trying to get a lot of "discovery" which is basically the ability for google/waymo to gather information on ubers corporate network.
EDIT: (1) isn't true, but there are some strange edge cases around what stealing is, like, if levandowski is developing the state of the art stuff himself, and had been working on it since before waymo, what is his knowledge, and what is google/waymo's trade secrets?
We found that six weeks before his resignation this former employee, Anthony Levandowski, downloaded over 14,000 highly confidential and proprietary design files for Waymo’s various hardware systems, including designs of Waymo’s LiDAR and circuit board. To gain access to Waymo’s design server, Mr. Levandowski searched for and installed specialized software onto his company-issued laptop. Once inside, he downloaded 9.7 GB of Waymo’s highly confidential files and trade secrets, including blueprints, design files and testing documentation. Then he connected an external drive to the laptop. Mr. Levandowski then wiped and reformatted the laptop in an attempt to erase forensic fingerprints.
Ref: https://medium.com/waymo/a-note-on-our-lawsuit-against-otto-...
An SVN client being used to access an SVN repository is hardly unusual, certainly not in the way insinuated by the wording presented.
Basically, I don't think it's hard to construct an entirely innocent narrative of events (assuming SVN access was normal for him). The later developments do make it look fishy, but since I doubt anyone would have thought anything amiss with the list of actions without the later events, it's far from a smoking gun when taken by itself.
The laptop in question connected to Google only 3 times between March 2, 2015 and November 25, 2015, despite being configured to connect every 15 minutes. ~ 2 hours on Oct 22, ~2 hours on Nov 20, and "briefly" on Nov 25. (My interpretation? It was almost always off and not in use).
Windows was reinstalled on Nov 26th.
On Dec 3, searched were done on Google's internal search system for how to log in and setup access through SVN to the driving car project ("chauffer").
Tortoise SVN was downloaded and installed on Dec 11. It then "downloaded over 14,000 files from the SVN repository". (My interpretation? A SVN checkout of the entire repo was done).
A USB card reader was attached on Dec 14 for about 8 hours.
On Dec 18, the laptop was reinstalled with Goobuntu (Google's custom Ubuntu).
The machine stayed on and checking in to Google normally from the time of the install until Dec 21, when it received a "machine certificate", within a minute of which it was not seen again on Google's networks, despite being configured to connect every 15 minutes (My interpretation? It was off again).
The filing goes on to talk about some Google drive exports of documents that don't necessarily look good for Levandowski.
My purpose here isn't to convince anyone that he's innocent, just to point out that Google's allegations are worded in a way to cast the most suspicion while being technically true. Through the omission of the timeline it sounds like his actions were all taken at once, which looks a little more premeditated, when instead it was over a period of a couple weeks. It's entirely possibly that Levandowski purposefully obfuscated his actions by spreading them out temporally, so this isn't evidence he didn't do what is alleged, but I think it's important people have the facts before making judgments based on Waymo's lawyer's accounting, which is obviously as beneficial to Waymo as possible, as should be expected.
1: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3515476-Declaration-...
The summary does seem to make it pretty clear which way the preponderance of evidence goes. That'd be an awful lot of coincidences to have all that stuff lining up in one particular way -- it just seems unlikely.
All of that is bad for Levandowski, but it's unclear if any of those files got used by Uber, which is where the case may very well fizzle out.
Actually, no. All they have is that a few days after an SVN sync, a USB card reader was attached for 8 hours. There is no evidence presented that he actually copied any files, much less the synced SVN files, to whatever was connected with the USB card reader. He could have plugged it in to copy his personal SSH keys to the machine and left it in until he left for the day for all we know.
There is separate information that he exported a single Google Drive file to a personal device on January 11, titled "Chauffer TL Weekly Updates - Q4 2015". There are further logs about other high level engineers that subsequently left that also exported Google Drive files to personal devices prior to leaving as well.
The expert testimony identified a specific model card reader attached to the computer a full three days later. It didn't say that a memory card was ever inserted into the card reader and mounted a logical volume. Nor did the expert testimony mention any files copied to an external drive. The have an expert testimony with specific details from logs about a card reader being inserted but no specific details about a storage device or files being copied? Does the lack of these details but specificity of other details not strike anyone else as odd?
The only copying of files that were specifically identified in the expert testimony was the copying of about a half dozen files to Google drive. That's it. I'm not saying that there isn't the possibility of wrongdoing, but the expert testimony certainly doesn't support the allegations enough to meet the criteria of "preponderance of evidence" for me at least. The testimony definitely doesn't meet the criteria of being a smoking gun, yet that is how it has been reported.
Not particularly. There's only so much they can log easily by tying into the system. Card reader insertions are easily tracked through OS level event logs in most operating systems, but generating a log entry for every file copy that happens is quite another level of granularity.
It's sort of like street level cameras. They may catch someone going into a a house or business, but unless you have prior knowledge that there is a camera inthe house or business that the state should have access to, omission of footage of what happened inside does not insinuate that something is being omitted on purpose.
> The only copying of files that were specifically identified in the expert testimony was the copying of about a half dozen files to Google drive.
Yep, and only one of them was by Levandowski. "Chauffer TL Weekly Updates - Q4 2015"
There's only so much that the expert testimony was able to establish. But what it did do was get the judge to authorize more discovery, so Google will apparently get a lot of data from Uber to search through to find their smoking gun, if it exists.
Also, while copying isn't auditable on windows, windows can audit object reads and writes. Were there any logs showing that the directory with the files were read while the card reader was inserted into the machine? It's off by default however. Does anyone know the default audit settings of a new google windows installation to know what folders it turns on logging for if any?
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc976403.aspx
These are all issues and details I would expect to be mentioned in an expert's report if they weren't trying to be selective in the details they provided. Since this expert works for Google, omitting details in Google's favor wouldn't surprise me. I didn't see any statement in the expert's report where they had to make a statement under oath where they declare that they aren't omitting any other details that may be relevant to the court. Without such a declaration, it's possible to be truthful, but deceptive without perjuring yourself.
As I understand it it's not out of the realm of possibility for a lawyer to advise doing so even for completely innocent clients. It's not hard to get tripped up on the stand and sound guilty even when you aren't.
Now that ought to be evidence that Uber could use in its defense. Instead, Uber is going to extrordinary lengths to try to keep it out of the trial.
Personally, I suspect we'll eventually fine out that Levandoswki - and others, check the filing - did steal trade secrets.
It is true that you can't prevent someone from practicing their profession under the terms of California employment law (other states vary) -- but if you take reasonable steps to protect your trade secrets, the employees can be bound to honor that secrecy by not disclosing them to future employers.
Source: I've been involved in a trade secret dispute (it was nonsense but annoying), and I am definitely not a lawyer.
Yes.
> Was the design not similar enough to prove Uber's use of Google's IP?
It may well be, at trial, in court.
> Am I remembering or interpreting the story incorrectly?
No - but it still has to be demonstrated to be true to the extent required for a civil case.
"Beyond reasonable doubt" is the standard of evidence required in a criminal case. The standard of evidence required in a civil case is a "preponderance of the evidence". This standard is met if the proposition is more likely to be true than untrue (ie >50% chance).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(law)#Preponde...
Misdirected emails happen. I was even recently called by a vendor on my cell phone (side effect of open offices: no office phone) for an old company that wanted to talk about the sensors they were using for a new project. The vendor still thought I worked there even two years after leaving.
It's doubtful whether this will be even admitted as evidence.
> immediately and in writing exercise the full extent of their corporate, employment, contractual, and other authority to (a) prevent Anthony Levandowski and all other officers, directors, employees, and agents of defendants from consulting, copying, or otherwise using the downloaded materials; and (b) cause them to return the downloaded materials and all copies, excerpts, and summaries thereof to Waymo (or the Court) by MAY 31 AT NOON [1]
---
I believe that authority includes firing him if he did not comply.
[1] https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3722249/Uber-Inju...
If the court is compelling Uber to produce documents and/or information, and if those documents/information are in the hands on one employee, then the courts are compelling Uber to compel employee. That's Uber's card to play, "punishment, up to and including termination".
The court didn't order Uber to fire Levandowski, it ask Uber to do everything within its power to produce documents/information.
Source: https://arstechnica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Uber.Waym... (page 23, footnote 9).
Its also entirely unclear if they will actually lose the case or not. Comments made in the PI ruling make it seem very ambiguous, and it will hinge on the results of further discovery. If no new relevant evidence is found in discover, uber will be found innocent.
This is civil, so a preponderance of evidence is the burden here. Can he fight that at all without talking? Google has a ton of evidence that he 'downloaded' a lot of stuff. It's not a big jump to see Otto/Uber made a tremendous amount of progress pretty rapidly too. I'm not the judge but being an engineer, knowing other engineers, hearing Google's story about the data he took, seeing the dollar figures, it seems damning. What evidence is there to the other side if he won't explain things?
Pleading the fifth in a civil case can be used as a negative inference, so if you're not prepared to talk and the other side has evidence it's going to be an uphill struggle at best.
How does firing him equate to pressuring him to testify?
"I still refuse to testify."
"Alright, you're fired."
That's all they can do.
Probably not a good idea to do something illegal in the middle of a lawsuit.
Legend has it that Japanese companies, rather than terminate under-performing employees, will seat them "at the window" and not assign them any tasks at all ... This is not terribly compelling short-term, but is horribly boring .
Also, you probably would have to hide all the work, since depending on your contract your employer would probably have some claim to it, since it was during work hours.
I once worked at a newspaper, when "online" was new and side project of the marketing department so that they could sell more ads.
Until I automated things, we were cutting and pasting a few articles each night from Quark into BBEdit and hand-massaging it into HTML templates for upload. They assigned us an "editor". Poor guy had written pro-civil-rights editorials at a time when that didn't go over well. Got assigned shit jobs for decades to try and force him out. We didn't create new content; there was nothing to edit. But, they made him go to all the meetings and report that each day. Dude used a giant trackball and knew nothing about tech, but somehow landed in the department that would one day rule the newsroom. I wonder how he's doing these days.
What do you think they do with the managers they want to fire? ;)
Hell, even in the entertainment industry, where employment is gig-based, Masashi Tashiro didn't get blackballed until he was convicted twice for voyeurism, twice for drug abuse, once for nearly crippling a guy in a car accident he caused, and once for posessing an illegal weapon [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masashi_Tashiro#Second_trial_f...
The "pointless simple make-work" isn't to build up cause, it's to abuse and degrade them until they have enough of it and quit. The technical term for this is "constructive dismissal".
Uber has one and one chance only to get this behind them: to play by the book and to ask 'how high' when the judge tells them to jump. If they try anything funny they can expect the ROI of that to be substantial and negative.
OT, have you noticed an increase in superfluous downvoting? I'm not really complaining, just trying to figure out if I'm imagining it or if it's randomness doing its thing.
Since HN has become so much bigger, I wonder if the mods could scale down the effect of downvoting. E.g. make it take two downvotes to make a comment appear at 0.
It removes scores from your comments and replaces your karma counter with "(9999)".
HN is much more pleasant now.
The location was a factory for a company you have heard of. Temporary employees were 99 and 44/100% of the workforce. One staffing agency, call it Agency A, had the main contract for the site and they were required to give some of the work to their competitors. It was policy to assign temps from other agencies impossible schedules so that they would quit and be replaced by temps from Agency A.
From what I recall, that purchase was made in Uber stock, and I'd expect it to have a vesting schedule. Depending on the length of the initial cliff, it seems possible that he hasn't vested any of that stock. I am speculating though and don't know for sure.
(IANAL but if I were I would probably not counsel doing that in any case. :-P )
Here is some context for those who aren't current on the case.
One result of the injunction (all of the hearings up until now) was that uber needs to use all of its power to compel levandowski to testify, the extreme limit of which is firing him. Uber followed through as was legally required
This is one part of a number of things that came out of preliminary injunction hearings, other parts are (1) the breadth of the case is much smaller than as originally filed, its now about trade secrets, not about patent infringement (2) Waymo is allowed a bit more indepth "discover" to see if they can find evidence of their tech in ubers documents or in ubers hardware itself.
Legally, there is no inference that can be drawn from this to imply uber is guilty, they have willfully carried out a court order.
Uber still has a self driving car program, that is staffed by a few hundred engineers.
The case against levandowski has been referred to a federal prosecutor to review the possiblity of criminal charges against levandowski, if I was his lawyer and he was in this position, I would likely refer him to "plead the fifth" regardless of his guilt.
The case is most definitely still going to trial