Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: For nearly 20 years,” writes WIRED’s Alex Davies in How Anthony Levandowski Put Himself at the Center of an Industry, “the French-American Levandowski has played a kind of purposeful Forrest Gump for the world of autonomous driving. Rather than stumbling into the center of one momentous event after another, Levandowski has put himself there. And he has left a mixed trail in his wake: Former colleagues have described him as brilliant, engaging, motivating, fast-charging, inconsiderate, a weasel, and just plain evil. None, though, deny that whether for good or ill, the benefit of society or himself, Levandowski has played a propulsive role in the development of self-driving tech.”
But that’s of little comfort to Levandowski, who was charged by the Feds earlier this week with stealing driverless-vehicle technology from Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo unit, prompting the New Yorker’s Charles Duhigg to explain How the Anthony Levandowski Indictment Helps Big Tech Stifle Innovation in Silicon Valley. The Economic Espionage Act of 1996, Duhigg notes, “was mostly intended to be used against overseas saboteurs, but it has largely been directed at American citizens — and, in effect, has made federal prosecutors into heavies operating on behalf of disgruntled tech firms.”
The definition of a ‘trade secret’ in the statute, Duhigg adds, is so broad that it could very well mean anything. Daniel Olmos, an attorney who has represented individuals accused of stealing trade secrets, once told Duhigg, “I get calls all the time from scared engineers, who once put some work stuff on their home computer so they could work on it after dinner, and now they’re worried if they try to jump to another firm they’re gonna get sued. And you know what? They’re right to be worried.
of this story at Slashdot.
Source:: Slashdot