Trump forgives Google engineer accused of stealing secrets for Uber

On his last full day in office, Donald Trump pardoned Anthony Levandowski, the engineer at the center of Waymo’s 2017 battle of trade secrets epic with Uber. Last year, Levandowski pleaded guilty to stealing a single confidential Google document; prosecutors agreed to drop the other charges against him.

Levandowski was an early key member of Google’s autonomous car project, but he left Google in early 2016 to found his own autonomous start-up. Within months, the startup was acquired by Uber for a nine-figure sum, and Levandowski was put in charge of Uber’s self-driving efforts.

But then Google’s autonomous driving unit – now known as Waymo – accused Levandowski of stealing trade secrets. According to Waymo, Levandowski had downloaded thousands of confidential documents from Google during his last days as a Google employee. Waymo says he was alerted to the theft after Uber submitted a design for a lidar circuit board to a third-party vendor – a vendor also used by Waymo. Uber’s design was almost identical to Waymo’s.

Waymo sued Uber for the theft. When Levandowski invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than testifying in the civil case, Uber fired him. Waymo and Uber settled their lawsuit in early 2018. Levandowski was eventually ordered to pay Waymo $ 179 million, forcing him to file for bankruptcy.

Federal prosecutors then charged Levandowski with 30 counts of theft of trade secrets. After Levandowski’s guilty plea, a judge sentenced him to 18 months in prison in August.

Levandowski had argued that he had health issues that put him at particular risk from COVID-19. The judge therefore allowed Levandowski to delay the execution of his sentence until the end of the pandemic. Now, Trump’s pardon means Levandowski won’t have to serve a day in prison.

According to the White House pardon announcement, Levandowski had a number of well-connected supporters. The list included PayPal co-founder and Facebook top funder, Peter Thiel, and Oculus VR founder, Palmer Luckey. These men were two of the most important figures in Silicon Valley to support Donald Trump in the 2016 election.

According to Trump’s clemency announcement, Levandowski “has paid a heavy price for his actions and plans to devote his talents to advancing the public good.” Levandowski will likely now focus on Pronto, an autonomous truck start-up that he co-founded in 2018.