Anthony L. is a pioneer in self-driving cars - and is now being sued in the US for stealing business secrets 33 times over. The engineer is suspected of having stolen the information he secrets from his former employer Google for years and sold it to the carrier Uber.
The stolen secrets should include information on key technology Lidar, which allows self-driving cars to recognize their environment. The prosecutors spoke of the company's "crown jewels". L. faces imprisonment of up to ten years and a fine of $ 8.25 million.
The US Attorney's office in San Jose, California, is the result of a previous lawsuit filed in 2017 by Google subsidiary Waymo. The prosecutors confirmed the ongoing investigations, but did not say whether they would investigate Uber and its founding CEO Travis Kalanick. Google and Uber would cooperate in the investigation.
Anthony L. was responsible for the autonomous vehicle development department at Uber. However, in 2017 he was fired because he did not cooperate with the investigators.
Uber does not want to know anything about stolen documents
Waymo claims that L. downloaded 14,000 business secrets before leaving the company in 2016 to found Otto, a self-propelled truck company. Otto was bought by Uber in 2016. The travel service provider threatened at this time apparently to lose the connection in the race for the new technology. Former Uber CEO Kalanick said in the 2017 process that autonomous vehicles are vital to his business. Uber, however, denied knowing about Google's stolen secrets.
About Waymo originally wanted to pay 245 million dollars, so as not to bring the case to court. But the competent federal judge recommended that he investigate the case.
