After years of legal drama, the epilogue to the high-profile trade secret theft case involving Google, Uber, and autonomous vehicle pioneer Anthony Levandowski is finally being written.
How It All Began
The case dates back to 2016, when Levandowski downloaded thousands of confidential files from Google before resigning. He used that data to launch Otto, a self-driving truck startup that Uber later acquired. Waymo alleged that Uber gained access to sensitive intellectual property through this acquisition, sparking a lawsuit that culminated in a high-profile trial in 2018. The companies settled after four days of testimony, but the criminal investigation against Levandowski didn’t surface until 2019, when a federal grand jury indicted him.
The Scope of the Theft
Levandowski faced 33 counts of theft and attempted theft of trade secrets for taking 14,000 files from Google. These files contained highly technical and costly information, including circuit board schematics, LiDAR installation and testing instructions, and internal tracking documents. LiDAR — short for Light Detection and Ranging — is a critical technology for autonomous vehicles, and Levandowski had led Google’s LiDAR engineering team.
“These were not small files,” Judge William Alsup said during sentencing. “This was massive in scale—the biggest trade secret crime I have ever seen.”
The Final Chapter
In March, Levandowski pleaded guilty to one count as part of a plea agreement, which led prosecutors to drop the remaining 32 charges. Levandowski was sentenced to 18 months in prison on August 4, 2020, for stealing trade secrets from Google's Waymo division. However, due to COVID‑19 concerns, he was not immediately incarcerated as Judge Alsup allowed him to delay serving his sentence until the pandemic risk subsided.
Before he began his prison term, Levandowski received a full pardon from President Donald Trump on January 20, 2021, which effectively exonerated him and prevented him from ever serving the sentence.
So, although Levandowski was sentenced, he never actually went to prison.
