Ex-Google engineer Anthony Levandowski is charged with trade secrets theft

Former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski was charged Tuesday with stealing self-driving car technology from the company shortly before joining Uber’s efforts to catch up in the high-stakes race to build robotic vehicles.

The indictment filed Tuesday by the U.S. attorney’s office in San Jose is an offshoot of a lawsuit filed in 2017 by Waymo, a self-driving car pioneer that spun off from Google and is still owned by Google’s parent, Alphabet. Uber agreed last year to pay Waymo $245 million to settle the case, but the presiding judge made an unusual recommendation to open a criminal investigation, having seen enough evidence to conclude a theft may have occurred.

Uber has considered self-driving technology crucial for its survival and for countering potential competitive threats from Waymo and dozens of other companies working on robotic vehicles. Uber wants to build self-driving cars so it can eliminate the need to have a human behind the wheel, one of the biggest expenses in its still-unprofitable ride-hailing service.

Levandowski, a pioneer in robotic vehicles, was charged with 33 counts of trade secret theft. Each count carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, totaling $8.25 million if convicted of all counts.

Miles Ehrlich, one of Levandowski’s attorneys, said the engineer was innocent. “He didn’t steal anything, from anyone,” Ehrlich said Tuesday in a statement he read outside the courthouse. “This case rehashes claims already discredited in a civil case that settled more than a year” ago.

Prosecutors said the investigation is ongoing, but they wouldn’t say whether Uber and former Chief Executive Travis Kalanick are targets. Prosecutors said Google, Waymo and Uber cooperated in the investigation. Uber issued a statement Tuesday promising to continue cooperating.

Although Tuesday’s indictment didn’t charge Uber, it’s a stain for a company that has been trying to recover from a series of scandals that led up to Kalanick’s exit two years ago. In addition to trying to reverse perceptions that it’s a technology thief, Uber has been dealing with fallout from its own acknowledgment of rampant sexual harassment, its use of software designed to dupe regulators and a yearlong cover-up of a hacking attack that stole the personal information of 57 million passengers and 600,000 drivers.

The case seems unlikely to endear Uber to investors who are already skeptical about the company’s ability to make money after piling up billions of dollars of losses. The lack of profits is the main reason the company’s stock has fallen about 25% below the price set during its much-ballyhooed initial public offering in May. On Tuesday, Uber shares slipped 0.6% to $33.11.

The FBI depicted its pursuit of the complex case as a sign of its commitment to protecting technology considered vital to the economy’s growth. “Silicon Valley is not the Wild West,” said John Bennett, the FBI agent in charge of the investigation.

Levandowski, 39, turned himself in Tuesday and was released later in the day on a $2-million bond. Prosecutors agreed to the release, even while characterizing him as a flight risk because of his wealth and dual citizenship in the United States and France. Levandowski had already surrendered both passports to the FBI and will be required, at least initially, to wear an ankle bracelet with GPS tracking. He is banned from airports while release details are being worked out.

Levandowski was accused of stealing years of top-secret information, which prosecutors likened to the crown jewels of the Waymo spinoff. That included breakthroughs in lidar, a key piece of technology that enables self-driving cars to detect what’s around them.

During the Waymo trial, Kalanick conceded that Uber needed to develop self-driving cars if it hoped to maintain its early position as the world’s largest ride-hailing service. But he denied that he resorted to stealing technology from Google. He said he believed Google was an ally until he began to suspect the company intended to launch its own ride-hailing service consisting entirely of its robotic vehicles.

But Kalanick also testified that his push to build a fleet of self-driving cars for Uber led him to start wooing Levandowski in 2015 while the engineer was still at Google. Levandowski left Google early the following year to devote his time to Otto, a self-driving truck company he started with another Google employee, Lior Ron, who also left his job at the tech giant. Uber bought Otto later in 2016 for $680 million.

Waymo, which spun off from Google in 2016, alleged that Levandowski downloaded 14,000 documents containing its trade secrets before he left for Otto. Uber denied knowing anything about those documents, but eventually fired him after he repeatedly asserted his constitutional right against self-incrimination leading up to the trial.

Ehrlich’s statement Tuesday said Levandowski downloaded the documents as an authorized Google employee and never brought those files to Uber or any other company.

The whiff of potential wrongdoing became even more pungent after the disclosure of allegations by a former Uber security specialist, Richard Jacobs, that the company employed an espionage team to spy on Waymo and other rivals while creating ways to conceal any stolen technology.

Google also pursued a separate case against Levandowski in arbitration proceedings, which resulted in a panel ordering Levandowski to pay the company $127 million, according to a disclosure made by Uber leading up to its IPO. Uber may be held liable for paying all or part of that as part of guarantees it made in its Otto acquisition, but believes it may be able to get out of those obligations.

After Levandowski left Uber, he began a self-driving start-up called Pronto. That company said Tuesday that he would no longer be its CEO as he defends himself against the charges.