Posted on Jan 20, 2021 at 11:09 amUpdated Jan 20, 2021 at 11:43 am
Former advisor Steve Bannon, rappers Lil Wayne and Kodak Black… and Anthony Levandowsky. The former engineer of Google and Uber, found guilty of one of the most famous thefts of trade secrets, is now a free man: he is on the list of 73 people pardoned by Donald Trump just before the end of his term (the sentence of 70 others was commuted).
Anthony Levandowsky “paid a significant price for his actions and plans to dedicate his skills to the common good”, justifies the White House press release, stressing that the judge who sentenced to 18 months in prison, last August, he himself had called “a brilliant engineer, avant-garde, as our country [the United States, note] needs”.
Golden bridge
The press release does not mention, however, that District Judge William Alsup had never seen “the greatest crime of industrial espionage” despite his more than twenty years of experience. Across the Atlantic, the case still resonates: pioneer of the autonomous car, Anthony Levandowsky was found guilty of the theft of more than 14,000 confidential files when he left Waymo, the autonomous vehicle division of Google.
One of the fathers of Google Car then founded his own start-up specializing in autonomous trucks, Otto, bought for $ 680 million seven months after its creation by Uber – the engineer, who had been offered a pont d’or, had been placed by Travis Kalanick at the head of the autonomous car division of the giant of the VTC.
Google quickly accused Uber of using its intellectual property and filed a civil lawsuit, forcing Uber to part ways with Anthony Levandowsky in 2017. The latter has since founded another company, Pronto. AI, while dealing with his legal quarrels. He had not yet started his prison sentence due to the coronavirus epidemic raging in American prisons.
Not out of the woods
It will therefore never have to be purged: this son of a French diplomat was pardoned after receiving the support of big conservative names in American tech, including the conservative billionaire Peter Thiel – a longtime supporter of Donald Trump – or of Palmer Luckey, a virtual reality pioneer who had embarked on construction of an anti-immigration wall stuffed with high-tech.
If presidential clemency exempts him from his criminal conviction, Anthony Levandowsky’s judicial soap opera is not over for all that: he still has to pay $ 179 million to Waymo in the context of civil proceedings opposing him to the affiliate of Google. It is besides declared bankrupt there is a little less than a year to continue negotiating with its creditors.