Former Google
Levandowski filed for bankruptcy shortly after the outcome was announced. In the Chapter 11 filing, Levandowski reported assets between $50 million and $100 million and between $100 million and $500 million in liabilities. Before he left the company, Levandowski once received a $120 million bonus from Google.
Neel Chatterjee, an attorney at Goodwin Procter who represents Levandowski said this case was about employment-poaching, not theft: "This arbitration was not about trade secrets but about employees leaving Google for new opportunities and an engineer being used as a pawn by two tech giants," Chatterjee said in a statement.
Levandowski left Google to found his own self-driving technology company, Otto. Otto was subsequently bought by Uber in 2016. In 2017, Google filed a case against Uber stating that it was their technology that was used to create Otto. This civil case between the two giant companies was settled out of court in Google's favor for $245 million.
In a statement released by Google when the original case was brought, the company said that "six weeks before his resignation... Anthony Levandowski downloaded over 14,000 highly confidential and proprietary design files for Waymo's various hardware systems... other former Waymo employees, now at Otto and Uber, downloaded additional highly confidential information."
According to Google, Levandowski used "specialized software" on his company laptop to access the company's confidential design files. He followed this up by wiping the laptop "in an attempt to erase forensic fingerprints."
Levandowski isn't the only one involved in this incident who has been ordered to pay Google. Lior Ron, leader of Uber's trucking business, settled with Alphabet, Google and Waymo's parent company, for $9.7 million. Ron convinced a number of Google employees to leave the company for Uber in 2016.
Due to an indemnification agreement that Uber has with its employees, the entire $9.7 million will be paid by the ride-sharing company. It is not clear whether or not Uber will also cover Levandowski's fine.
"Whether Uber is ultimately responsible for such indemnification is subject to a dispute between the Company and Levandowski," Uber said in a securities filing early last week. In the same filing, Uber estimated that the resolution of this dispute could result "in a possible loss of up to $64 million or more."
This case doesn't mark the end of Levandowski's troubles. The civil case between Google and Uber may have been settled, but the judge felt that criminal charges should be brought against Levandowski. Federal prosecution is being brought against Levindowski for his alleged theft.
