Engineer gets 18-month prison sentence in trade secrets case

SAN FRANCISCO -- The former Google engineer whose defection to Uber led to a high-stakes legal battle over proprietary self-driving car technology and criminal charges of trade secrets theft must serve 18 months in prison, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

Siding with prosecutors that home confinement is not enough to deter future theft, U.S. District Judge William Alsup said Anthony Levandowski must go to jail or that he risks "giving a green light to every future, brilliant engineer to steal trade secrets with billions on the line."

"This was the biggest trade secret crime I have ever seen," he said. "This was not small. This was massive in scale."

In March, Levandowski cut a deal with federal prosecutors over claims he stole proprietary information from Waymo, Google's self-driving car spinoff, to sell to Uber. He agreed to plead guilty to one count of 33 total charges of theft and attempted theft of trade secrets, carrying a statutory maximum of up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Alsup ordered Levandowski to serve a year-and-a-half in prison and three years of supervised release with the special condition that he regularly give speeches titled "Why I Went to Federal Prison." He will also pay a $95,000 fine and roughly $750,000 in restitution to his former employer.

"The key question here is deterrence," the federal judge said.

Levandowski will be allowed to start his prison term after the COVID-19 pandemic has passed. He said he is especially vulnerable to the virus because of recurring respiratory issues.

In dueling sentencing recommendations, defense attorneys and federal prosecutors sparred over the impact of Levandowski's crime and the appropriate sentence to prevent future theft. U.S. v. Levandowski, 19-cr-00377 (N.D. Cal., filed Aug. 15, 2019).

Levandowski sought a year of home confinement, a $95,000 fine and 200 hours of community service, while prosecutors wanted a 27 month prison term and a $40,000 fine.

Representing Levandowski during the telephonic hearing, Ismail Ramsey pushed back on prosecutors' characterization of his client as the "poster boy" of rampant greed in Silicon Valley, arguing there's no evidence he used or shared any proprietary information with Uber. While it was never disputed that Levandowski took Google documents before leaving the company, he said there was no injury as a result of his theft.

"There's been some speculation about whether he would've used it or whether he might've used it in negotiating or talking to Uber... but for sentencing purposes, we should stay on the factual record," the Ramsey & Ehrlich LLP partner said. "There's no evidence."

A sentence of home confinement, he continued, is more in line with sentences imposed in similar cases in which a trade secret was taken but never used.

Alsup, who oversaw the civil trial between Waymo and Uber which put Levandowski at the center of the accusations, replied that the defendant had the motive and opportunity to use and leverage the information in negotiations with Uber. While the government might not have been able to prove it, he said, does not mean it should not be considered.

"From the Waymo case, I looked at a lot of those 14,000 files," he said. "There's no doubt in my mind there were a lot of trade secrets in there."

Levandowski admitted in his plea agreement he improperly took an acknowledged trade secret from Google on the status of its self-driving car development efforts, which included quarterly goals, weekly metrics and technical obstacles, to use at Uber.

Ehrlich also argued the collateral consequences Levandowski faced in addition to now being a convicted felon is enough to discourage intellectual property theft.

Levandowski filed for bankruptcy in March after a San Francisco County judge affirmed a $179 million judgment against him by an arbitration panel in Google's suit alleging breach of contract and fraud

Assistant U.S. Attorney Katherine Wawrzyniak, meanwhile, portrayed Levandowski as a brazen criminal whose crime should not be taken lightly simply because he's a talented engineer. She countered statements from Ramsey that no injury resulted from the theft, arguing its true scope will never be known because such information is difficult to prove after-the-fact.

Answering claims that Levandowski is broke as a result of the arbitration award, Warzyniak said Levandowski is pursuing litigation to have Uber pay the fee.

"His net worth is over $60 million today," she said. "The narrative that this defendant has lost his vast fortune is just not true."