A star Silicon Valley engineer who pleaded guilty to stealing trade secrets from Google is asking a bankruptcy court to force Uber to pay him $180million because he claims the ride-sharing app broke a promise to cover his legal expenses.
Anthony Levandowski, who is considered a pioneer in the field of driverless vehicles, claims that Uber reneged on an agreement to pay for his legal expenses and liabilities after it convinced him to leave Google in 2016.
According to Levandowski, Uber aggressively recruited him when it expressed interest in buying his self-driving startup, Otto, just a few months after he left Google.
Anthony Levandowski, 39, pictured outside a California court last year, is asking a federal bankruptcy court in California to compel Uber to pay $179million in legal expenses and damages
Levandowski alleges that Uber reneged on an agreement to protect him from legal action brought by Google after the ride-sharing app aggressively recruited him to join their company
In papers filed with federal bankruptcy court in San Francisco on Monday, Levandowski claims that before his company was acquired by Uber, the ride-sharing giant had its lawyers investigate Otto.
The lawyers discovered that Levandowski had files that belonged to Google on his computers, according to the court filing.
Uber’s lawyers were also made aware of the fact that Levandowski tried to recruit several Google employees to Otto while he was still working for the search engine, Levandowski says in the court filing.
Levandowski claims that he warned Uber’s then-Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick that Google would likely take him to court if his company bought Otto.
According to Levandowski, however, Kalanick told him not to worry.
‘Uber eats injunctions for breakfast,’ Kalanick is alleged to have told Levandowski.
DailyMail.com has reached out to Kalanick and Uber for comment.
Levandowski claims that when he agreed to sell his company to Uber, the terms of the deal included an ironclad indemnification clause in which the company promised to defend him against any legal action taken by Google.
Uber agreed to cover all of Levandowski’s legal expenses, including damages, even if a court found in Google’s favor that he was guilty of stealing trade secrets.
In October 2016, Google filed suit against Levandowski, who was defended in court by Uber’s lawyers.
Google accused Levandowski of downloading 14,000 ‘highly confidential’ files measuring 9.7 gigabytes from its Waymo division, which was working on self-driving technology.
Uber was ordered by a court to hand over the files.
Six weeks after downloading the files, Levandowski resigned and started his own self-driving startup, Otto, which was eventually acquired by Uber for $680million.
Even though Google was suing Uber, Levandowski was a central player in the case.
In this 206 file photo, Anthony Levandowski, who was head of Uber’s self-driving program, speaks about their driverless car in San Francisco. Earlier this month, Levandowski pleaded guilty to stealing trade secrets from Google
Months into the trial, when Google’s lawyers sought to question Levandowski under oath, he invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege which protects witnesses against making self-incriminating statements.
Levandowski was concerned that if he testified about what he knew, he would be vulnerable to criminal prosecution.
Uber’s lawyers, however, demanded that Levandowski turn over documents related to the case. He refused.
Shortly afterward, Uber fired Levandowski, though the company continued to pay his legal expenses for two years as part of a separate legal action taken by Google against its former engineer.
Last month, Levandowski pleaded guilty to stealing trade secrets after he left Google’s self-driving car division, now renamed Waymo. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, sued Uber, accusing it of stealing company knowledge and patents. The two sides eventually settled last year.
Uber and Google eventually settled their case.
Late last year, however, Uber informed Levandowski that it would no longer provide attorneys to represent him.
The company also said it would not pay the $179million judgment against him.
According to Levandowski, Uber claimed that the indemnification arrangement was void because the engineer did not reveal that he was also involved in creating another startup, Tyto.
In April 2017, documents from Google’s arbitration against Levandowski allege that Levandowski and another former Google employee, Lior Ron, formed Tyto while still employed by Google, according to Tech Crunch.
Tyto was a self-driving startup that relied on LiDAR, a technology which uses surveying to measure distance to a target.
In the field of autonomous vehicles, LiDAR is used to detect obstacles and to navigate safely through environments using rotating laser beams.
Levandowski disputes Uber’s contention that it was unaware of his role with Tyto.
He says Uber knew about Tyto because the information was contained in files he gave the company before it acquired Otto.
Levandowski claims that Uber retroactively and unilaterally voided the indemnification clause even though its lawyers spent three years representing him in court.
After Google won its arbitration against Levandowski, it was able to claw back some $127million that he earned in the 10 years during which he worked for the company.
The judgment against Levandowski forced him to declare bankruptcy.
Levandowski was also prosecuted by the federal government. Earlier this month, he agreed to plead guilty to stealing trade secrets.
He faces 30 months in prison.
‘All of us have the right to change jobs, none of us has the right to fill our pockets on the way out the door,’ US attorney David Anderson said in a release announcing the original counts of theft and attempted theft of trade secrets last year.