Anthony Levandowski, a founding engineer on Google's Project Chauffeur self-driving program and later head of Uber's autonomous-vehicle effort, became the first high-profile criminal defendant prosecuted under the Defend Trade Secrets Act in the autonomous-vehicle sector. In August 2019 the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California charged him with 33 counts of theft and attempted theft of trade secrets while at Google; in March 2020 he reached a plea agreement and pled guilty to a single count (count 33), admitting that on or about January 17, 2016 he downloaded the "Chauffeur Weekly Update" — a spreadsheet containing quarterly goals, team OKRs, summaries of 15 technical challenges and other internal program data — to his personal laptop and accessed it after his resignation from Google roughly ten days later. On August 4, 2020 Judge William Alsup sentenced Levandowski to 18 months in prison, $756,499.22 in restitution to Waymo and a $95,000 fine, rejecting his request for home confinement with the observation that leniency would "[give] a green light to every future brilliant engineer to steal trade secrets." Prosecutors had recommended 27 months. Levandowski, who had earlier been hit with a $179 million arbitration award to Google and forced into bankruptcy, was pardoned by President Donald Trump on January 20, 2021.

Sources

• -https://www.cdflaborlaw.com/blog/waymo-v-uber-anthony-levandowski-convicted-do-not-pass-go
• -https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/04/anthony-levandowski-sentenced-to-18-months-in-prison-as-new-4b-lawsuit-against-uber-is-filed/