starting Monday, Levandowski goes to trial to defend himself - and at least $ 120 million in incentive payments he collected from the search giant before he defected to Uber He's fighting Google's claims that he breached his contract as the leaders of its autonomous vehicle unit, now called Waymo, by recruiting from its ranks for his rival company, Otto.
The case is in private arbitration, behind closed doors and out of the public eye. it has quietly drawn Uber back into a fight, if indirectly, that the company eagerly put behind it. That's because as part of its deal to acquire Otto, Uber agreed to provide Levandowski legal cover, known as indemnification, for claims brought against him by Google.
uber settled the trade-secrets claims in February by paying $ 245 million worth of equity to WaymoSome legal experts say that the agreement is not resolved Google's claims against Levandowski, because such settlements are generally aimed at a measure of certainty by extinguishing all legal exposure from an adversary.
Otto Deal
"I believe that it was going to be indemnified Levandowski," said Jim Evans, a lawyer who defends companies against employment lawsuits and is not involved in the case. "It's astonishing that it did not include the release of Levandowski in connection with its settlement, because they are kind of right back in the middle of the soup. They're going to be on the hook by some way of indemnity if Levandowski gets hit. "
uber spokesman Matt Kallman declined to comment. Neel Chatterjee, a lawyer representing Levandowski in the arbitration, and Google also declined to comment
Uber purchased Otto, formed just before Levandowski quit Waymo in January 2016, in a deal worth more than $ 600 million in stock. Most of those funds were not paid.
LiDar Tech
Levandowski became head of Uber's self-driving project, but was demoted, and finally fired, as Waymo's trade-secrets case heated up He was accused of conspiring with Travis Kalanick, who was then Uber's chief executive officer, to steal thousands of proprietary files from LiDar technology that help driverless cars see their surroundings. Uber denied wrongdoing.
google's arbitration complaint Instead, it asserts that Levandowski used secretly "confidential information related the unique skills, experiences and compensation packages" to Google employees.
California has a strong public policy stimulant and ability to move freely between companies. However, all employees remain bound by a duty of loyalty, said Jim Pooley, a intellectual property lawyer based in Silicon Valley.
'One Master'
that duty is not working against the interests of one's employer, specially when it comes to collaborating with competitors, he said. levandowski's obligations to Google had been heightened by his role as a manager and his knowledge of the abilities and salaries of other workers, and he did it to take a competitor, he said.
"You have to serve one master at a basic idea," Pooley said.
Google's founders may be promoted to work on projects as a management tactic. The company coined the "20 percent projects," efforts to let staff create new business ideas during their official hours. At X, Alphabet's research lab, where labandowski worked, employees were given incentives to drum up inventions.
Levandowski's departure from Google came during an exodus of early staffers in its car project to emerging rivals in the nascent self-driving space. He allegedly said one of his colleagues before he left the company that the "interested in buying" Google's LiDar design team When Levandowski started Otto, a handful of Google employees soon followed him to the new company.
evans said Google's claims against Levandowski remains unresolved since the Alphabet Inc. The unit may have been unwilling, under any circumstances, to drop them. The arbitration complaint was always different from, and filed four months before, the 2017 trade-secrets lawsuit.
"Sometimes senior management feels so strong in their belief that a defendant has seriously wronged them that he pursues a claim to the very end," he said. "Sometimes they get entrenched and say, 'I am going after the wrongdoer.' It is a matter of principle and a exercise of conviction."
the case is Google v Levandowski, Confidential Arbitration Demand, Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services (San Francisco).