Otto Co-founder Anthony Levandowski may be in for some further trouble. The man already stands accused of stealing technology from Waymo and using it to sett up his own shop. Now though, Google is bringing in claims according to which, Levandowski had been clandestinely working upon building a company far before Otto and had been involved in attempts to poach Google employees.
The search engine giant mentioned all this in an arbitration it has brought in against Levandowski and Otto’s other Co-founder Lior Ron. It is claimed that the duo, which left Google and formed Otto in January last year, attempted to recruit Google employees for their own ventures as well. The duo also utilized their internal knowledge of worker’s compensation and salaries to help them gain new employees for their team.
if proved, this alone could land Levandowski in some very real trouble. Google’s contract has a clause wherein it forbids employers from recruiting other employees for a certain period of time after they leave the company. However, that did not stop the Otto founder from attempting to source employees despite of the fact that he was employed. After Google first cam to know about the fact in 2015, it attempted to fire Levandowski however, the dame had already been done.
And that of course, is only part of the case. Levandowski is already in trouble for having sourced thousands of documents containing important technical details and using them to set up his own venture — that is what Google says anyways. Indeed, Uber’s meteoric rise n the self-driving sphere is also being said to be a result of Levandowski’s not so sincere efforts while he was at his previous employer — again according to Google.
Interestingly, Google also says that Levandowski had created and operated two side businesses while working with it. The businesses included Odin Wave and Tyto LiDar and the activities of the two, which later merged into one, appeared closely inspired by external manufacturer. While Odin was registered to a property owned by Levandowski, Tyto belonged to a friend of the latter. Although, no one disclosed this fact earlier.
As things stand now, Google is suing Levaandowski and is seeking damages for multiple breaches of his contract with the search engine giant..
