Levandowski founded his own autonomous trucking startup, Otto, in 2016 and six months later Uber bought Otto for nearly $700 million.
Trouble on all sides
In February 2017, Waymo sued Uber and Levandowski over the IP theft.
With the purchase of Otto in 2016, the company signed an indemnity agreement which agreed to compensate Levandowski in case any claims were brought forward by his former employer. “Uber eats injunctions for breakfast,” Uber CEO Travis Kalanick allegedly told Levandowski.
However, Uber lost it’s confidence in Levandowski when they found out about the full extent of the download that contained Google’s trade secrets. And they were reportedly upset when they found out how much they were going to have to pay Google.
As a result, Uber refused to honor the agreement, instead firing and then suing Levandowski.
Throughout the criminal proceedings, Levandowski’s attorneys were adamant that none of the Google documents were ever used or shared.
“Google engaged an army of lawyers and forensic experts to comb through Uber’s facilities, servers, source code, design files, and prototypes — making 12 separate installations in all,” according to Levandowski’s lawyers.