
Things learned from Anthony Levandowski's deposition in Waymo vs. Uber - ziszis
http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/waymo-vs-uber-8-things-i-learned-from-anthony-levandowski-taking-the-5th
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ziszis
Waymo's allegations now go much deeper and further back than just Otto:

* "Levandowski was deceiving Google almost from the moment it hired him to work on the Street View maps project back in 2007."

* "Levandowski controlled a company called Dogwood Leasing that hired ex-Google contractor and 510 Systems engineer Asheem Linaval to use Google’s secrets to develop self-driving car technology."

* "Levandowski founded yet another startup, Odin Wave, feeding it confidential lidar technology ... renaming the company Tyto, to hide his involvement."

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empath75
How did he have time to do his day job with all this scamming on the side?

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Animats
I met him when he was doing a DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle in 2004. He was an
undergrad at UC Berkeley then, was doing the self-driving motorcycle, and had
a successful startup selling a large folding tablet computer for viewing
engineering drawings at construction sites. He does seem to get a lot done.

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djsumdog
Some people are just driven that way. They don't watch much TV or play video
games. They just eat, sleep and breath their designs.

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__jal
> They just eat, sleep and breath their designs.

I think a different verb may apply in this particular case.

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Animats
The use of OMW Corp, which is just a contract CNC machine shop, indicates the
LIDAR in dispute has moving parts. It's probably just another rotating
scanner. That approach is just for prototypes. Everybody serious is going with
flash LIDAR or MEMS.

If he'd been talking to somebody about custom GaInAs photosensor ICs, that
would indicate a more advanced technology.

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jacquesm
Does MEMS count as solid state or is it also seen as a moving part?

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Zigurd
Probably depends if the service life is in practical terms limited. Offhand
I'd guess it's probably very long. MEMS accelerometers in airbag sensors have
to stay within tolerances for the life of a car.

~~~
jacquesm
For sensors I can see how you could do that (piezo with a small weight
attached) and it will likely live a very long time. But for an MEMS actuator
that would be driven to oscillate it would be a lot harder to make that long-
lived.

~~~
Zigurd
To the extent I can find serivce life specs for MEMS tuning fork gyroscopes,
which are driven to oscillate, they say "more than 100,000 hours" \- about 10
years of powered-on time, which, for an automotive application like roll-over
sensing, is essentially forever, since cars have a low duty cycle.

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AceJohnny2
I'm kind of stunned at the amount of side-hustling that Levandowski seems to
have been doing while at Google. How could the Google not have been aware of
it, and how could it let it continue for so long?

If I were more conspiracy-minded, I'd think they let Otto happen in order to
feed a poison pill to Uber... In reality, I think they were just complacent,
but still :\

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ansy
> If I were more conspiracy-minded, I'd think they let Otto happen in order to
> feed a poison pill to Uber...

That would be a very bad strategy if true so I highly doubt it. IANAL, but I
believe under estoppel Google's knowledge of Levandowski's activity and
implicit permission to continue would forfeit Google's right to sue later.
Likely as soon as they came to know about it they took immediate action to
prevent him from taking this defense.

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arkitaip
Levandowski has absolutely tarnished his own reputation. Sooner or later he
will be abandoned by Uber - how could they possibly trust him if his thieving
goes back a decade? - and finding employment or trust in the industry is going
to be extremely difficult.

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tinbad
If he really made $120m from Google alone, he probably thought he was safe by
that point, I mean, he must have thought through this and bought himself a
private island somewhere to go to when the shit was going to hit the fan..?

~~~
tensorto
Or maybe he'll take his talents to China?

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Nelson69
What's Google's policy on side businesses? They're cool if you work on self-
driving cars and start LIDAR and "self-driving truck" side projects?

Did Levandowski have some sort of special pass due to the unicorn nature of
his experience and expertise?

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wetherbeei
[https://opensource.google.com/docs/iarc/](https://opensource.google.com/docs/iarc/)

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probe
Can someone (with hopefully a legal background) comment on what the judge will
be looking at when deciding if there should be an injunction against Uber and
stopping ALL their self-driving car work? What criteria are they specifically
looking at/how much burden of proof do they need?

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RockyMcNuts
seems Levandowski is out as head of the self-driving project at Uber, will
remain in some role but recuse himself from Lidar

"Uber's self-driving car boss, Anthony Levandowski, is stepping aside amid
legal fight with Waymo"

[http://www.businessinsider.com/anthony-levandowski-no-
longer...](http://www.businessinsider.com/anthony-levandowski-no-longer-leads-
uber-self-driving-cars-2017-4)

~~~
j_s
Discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14214772](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14214772)

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mks40
Anyone have the link to the original document? Could not find it (I understand
the original version was pulled due to the index, but other versions).

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MusaTheRedGuard
Yeah I'm also interested in the original deposition

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exhilaration
Some good stuff in here worth reading if you're following this case. The
author was able to figure out the names of redacted component suppliers.

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huangc10
Great analysis and generally a good read.

However, to simplify, I think the biggest lesson learned is:

When you create a product at a company and use the company's resources, the IP
belongs to the company. If you're going branch out and work on a related
product, you better understand the legal issues first.

Also, stealing is bad.

~~~
make3
"When you create a product at a company and use the company's resources, the
IP belongs to the company. If you're going branch out and work on a related
product, you better understand the legal issues first. "

I mean, this should be pretty obvious to anyone who has so much as had a
passing glance on their employment contract. I doubt very much that
Levandowski didn't know this could put him in trouble.

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noahmbarr
Link to deposition source doc?

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dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14214772](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14214772)
is more newsy so we'll treat this one as a semidupe (there probably being no
need for 2 Levandowskis in the top 4).

