Former Google engineer pleads guilty to stealing confidential document, Ars Technica

/ Anthony Levandowski leaves court in September Anthony Levandowski, the man at the center of Google’s epic legal battle with Uber over trade secrets, has agreed to plead guilty to stealing a single confidential document from Google. The guilty plea is likely to lead to a prison sentence of between two and two-and-a-half years.

Levandowski, a gifted engineer, was one of the early stars of Google’s self-driving car project. In , he decided to leave Google to start his own self-driving car startup. According to the plea deal, on his way out the door, Levandowski downloaded thousands of confidential Google documents and transferred them to his personal laptop. Uber acquired the startup a few months later in a deal worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Google conducted a forensic investigation and discovered what Levandowski had done. Google then sued Uber for theft of trade secrets. The companies settled the lawsuit a year later, with Uber giving Google more than $ 200 million in Uber stock.

But Levandowski was still in hot water. He had refused to testify during the civil trial, citing the Fifth Amendment. In , he was charged with 90 counts of stealing trade secrets. Each count related to a sensitive Google document Levandowski allegedly took with him on his way out of Google.

In his plea deal, Levandowski admits to stealing only one of these documents — and seemingly one of the least sensitive. While many of the documents contained technical specifications for Waymo hardware, Levandowski pled guilty to stealing a document called “Chauffeur TL weekly updates” —a document that tracked the progress of Google’s self-driving car project, Project Chauffeur. The government agreed to drop its charges against Levandowski for the other documents.

Under the terms of the plea deal, Levandowski and the government agree that this document was worth between $ , and $ 1.5 million. A trade secret theft in this range adds points to a defendant’s “offense level.” Combined with other factors, Levandowski should get a sentence of between and months under federal sentencing guidelines. However, judges often have the discretion to depart from the guidelines and sentence defendants to longer or shorter prison terms.

Levandowski accepts responsibility and is looking forward to resolving this matter, “a spokesman for Levandowski wrote in an emailed statement.” He is a young man with enormous talents and much to contribute to the fast-moving world of AI and AV and we hope that this plea will allow him to move on with his life and focus his energies where they matter most. “

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