[tozeur]

A friend of mine heard his personal attorney speak at a law school class. Even his attorney thought Anthony was a “jackass” for stealing the IP; his defense fell on him being an engineer who, at the end of the day, just wanted to build cool shit and wasn’t malicious.

[jacquesm]

His attorney should STFU about cases in progress to people who are not in any way involved in the suit.

Levandowski may be a jackass but that lawyer is not much better.

[Mvandenbergh]

Note that this is Levandowski's defence. "I did copy those files but only because I love tech, I would never deliberately steal IP, I'm really sorry about all this". What else could he do, he clearly copied the files so claiming he didn't wasn't going to work.

So his lawyer is just maintaining the same position that he did in court, otherwise this would be outrageous.

[reallydontask]

If he did say anything like that I'd agree with you but this is most likely distorted through retelling.

[duxup]

Maybe not malicious but what he walked away with wasn't just Google's IP, I'm sure plenty of people working for / with him worked on that IP too...

There is a certain amount of disregard for other people who want to make cool stuff too IMO.

[Nelson69]

He's cashed in on this theft to the tune of "$50m-$100m" what would it take to constitute mallace?

Sure, he's not building war weapons or anything like that, but he stole the IP and he made an F* ton of money from it, specifically selling it to competitors. That seems like about the only malicious thing you could do with that IP, if you ask me. Being not malicious would be if it did that for free.

What are the odds that he ends up living kind of normal after this? Like living in the suburbs in a 2500sqft house and commuting to some job that pays $130k? I think close to nil.

[zimpenfish]

> commuting to some job

That'd be some interview. "Could you tell us about a time when you had to resolve a difficult issue? Say when you nicked IP from Google and had to pay $179M as restitution? And could you then explain why we should trust you within a hundred miles of our IP?"

[nathanvanfleet]

Just a regular guy with assets somewhere between 50 and 100 million dollars.

[dang]

Please don't post unsubstantive comments here, regardless of how many millions someone has or you feel they have. This sort of comment is an internet trope that leads nowhere interesting.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[loeg]

Between -79 and -129 million dollars, really.

[jgalt212]

well, multiples of that before this settlement was announced.

[loeg]

No, those are pre-settlement. He's now insolvent. The article touches on this at the end.

[ethanwillis]

Not if he bought a mansion in Florida early on.

[edoceo]

Soon be underwater on that too :/

[Buge]

That's an asset, right? So it would be part of the $50-100M

[yebyen]

Not in Florida, https://www.alperlaw.com/florida-asset-protection/

[toomuchtodo]

Primary residence in Florida is shielded from bankruptcy and creditors. Also retirement accounts (both IRAs and 401ks). Lease your expensive ride and you’re mostly judgement proof.

[jgalt212]

You do realize he has very strong incentives to understate his net worth now.

[loeg]

So what? Bankruptcy courts weren't born yesterday; I'm sure they're familiar with that problem. And Google has reasonably strong incentives to collect as much of that $180M as they can, too.

[jgalt212]

everything you said is true, but it's much easier to hide assets than to hide debts.

[swiley]

I feel like this stuff should be public anyway, we’ve already had one person die over a company using “IP” to keep secrets.

Maybe what he did was wrong but I don’t like calling him a “jackass.”