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With a long career at Google and Uber, Anthony Levandowski is one of the most reputable engineers in the field of autonomous driving . However, he is also a man who faces a maximum penalty of 330 years in prison for 33 crimes of theft of trade secrets (a maximum of 10 years for each charge) from Google.

Although the announcement of his complaint has proved a surprise. The origin of Levandowski's legal problems date back to January 26, 2016, when he left Google without prior notice to sign for Uber .

The surprise signing of the star engineer by Uber provoked a response from Google in court with a civil process . After four days of trial, the process resulted in a friendly agreement between the two companies in February of 2017: Uber gave slightly less than 1% of its shares to Google as compensation and Levandowski was fired.

The binder to the civil process lifted the hare of the US authorities and the FBI began an investigation coordinated by the special agent John F. Bennet .

"The FBI has been investigating this case since May 2017 [four months after the civil process had a friendly binder]," Bennet said. "Silicon Valley is not the far west. The fast and competitive environment in which we live does not mean that federal laws do not apply or can be ignored. The FBI will not tolerate the theft of trade secrets, which are the crown jewels. of these companies ", he assured in a press conference without questions before the media.

14,000 files downloaded

During the investigations, Bennet and his agents collected evidence on how this engineer downloaded more than 14,000 files from Google to his computer (the vast majority password protected) that were hosted on two different platforms used by the company: subversion and Google Drive .

However, as indicated in the prosecution's complaint, the 33 charges for theft of trade secrets correspond to 33 password-protected files that the employee downloaded to his computer between November 12, 2015 and January 11, 2016.

Levandowski downloaded all those files while working on Google . However, this detail has not prevented his imputation or the holding of the preview of the trial against him.

According to the prosecution, the files seized by the employee had information such as schemes , instructions and internal documents of the project, among others.

He also maintains that " at the time he seized the files, Levandowski had a relationship with two companies that competed with Google in the field of autonomous driving: Tyto LiDAR LLC and 280 Systems, Inc". In a three-way business maneuver, the second of the companies changed its name to Ottomotto and bought the first one "shortly after Uber agreed to buy Ottomotto and sign Levandowski," they say.

" We all have the right to change jobs but nobody has the right to fill their pockets on the way to the door . Theft is not innovation," said Chief Prosecutor in the northern district of Carlifornia, David L. Anderson.

Meanwhile, Levandowski's lawyers, represented by the Ramsey & Ehrlich law firm, deny any involvement of their client. "He has not stolen anything from anyone"; They have said in a statement provided to the media. "The downloads of the case happened while Anthony was working on Google, when he and his team were authorized to use the information. None of those supposed secret files has ended up in the hands of Uber or other companies," the letter concludes.

On bail ... and with ankle brace

Throughout the preliminary hearing of the trial, Levandowski has pleaded not guilty through his lawyers to the 33 crimes charged by the prosecution.

Likewise, the judge has issued a preliminary bond of $ 300,000 for the defendant and has established as a guarantee two of his properties valued at $ 2 million. However, the final amount may vary and will be agreed upon in a hearing dated September 4.

In addition, Levandowski, who has dual citizenship, has had to hand over his passports (French and American) and must wear an electronic ankle brace that will inform him of his position at all times.

A series of precautionary measures imposed after an intervention by the prosecution that warned of a possible risk of leakage of Levandowski due to its lack of roots.

Precedents

Although the bulk of the maximum penalty to which he is exposed by the commission of these 33 crimes (if convicted) may seem exaggerated, it is likely that Levandowski will spend a long time in the shade .

According to statements in Wired, the intellectual property lawyer, Peter Toren, the market value of the stolen intellectual property will play a leading role in sentencing . "We are talking about material worth tens of millions of dollars," says the lawyer. "A very long sentence," he says.

According to estimates by the Reuters agency, the autonomous car sector will have a market value of one billion (one million million) dollars in the coming years. An industry that also pays generous salaries to chief engineers (such as Levandowski) that can reach $ 10 million a year.

The jurisprudence, which plays an essential role in the United States when dictating the magnitude of sentences, does not have many cases of this magnitude to its credit . However, cases judged to a lesser extent (in which the defendants weighed less crime and the value of intellectual property was considerably less) the penalties were very high.

One of the most popular cases was that of Walter Liew, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for 20 charges, which included theft and subsequent sale of trade secrets to Chinese companies valued at 20 million dollars.

A similar conviction (15 years and 8 months) was that received by Dongfan "Greg" Chung for a crime of conspiracy to commit economic espionage, six crimes of economic espionage (serving China) to benefit a foreign power, a crime of operate as an agent of a foreign power and a crime of false testimony before federal agents for stealing special technology of civil and military use for China valued at tens of millions of dollars.

Also, recently, a Texas state judge has convicted a man named Shan Shi of a single conspiracy charge for stealing trade secrets. Although the sentence has not yet been read, the verdict was guilty and in the process it has been demonstrated how it sought to be done with civil and military technology related to the oil industry with the intention of sending it to China, as in the two cases described above.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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