News that former Google engineer Anthony Scott Levandowski faces 33 counts of theft and attempted theft of trade secrets and 10 years of possible jail time if convicted buzzed across the Twitterverse last week and inspired massive media coverage. Even high-brow publications like The New Yorker weighed in on his indictment by a federal grand jury.
Levandowksi’s latest legal problems and a preceding lawsuit (since settled) between Waymo, the self-driving car unit of Google parent Alphabet Inc., and Uber over the whole matter may indeed be a comeuppance of sorts for an industry that boasts of its ability to “move fast and break things.” At the same time, the entire sordid affair is a reminder to the corporate world as a whole, and to the tech industry in particular, to be more proactive in deterring the theft of trade secrets. They might also take notice of a federal government seemingly more willing to pursue intellectual property thiefs.
