[battery_cowboy]

I take a different lesson: when a large company is affected, the small guy gets up to 30 months. When a small-time engineer gets his idea stolen by a big company in a similar way, they have zero recourse.

To be clear, I think both should be punished, but the large corp stealing ideas NEVER will.

[ehsankia]

This wasn't "an idea" being stolen, it was years of work and documents, nearly 10GB of it. That's very different from a big company taking someone's idea and recreating something similar from scratch.

[earthtourist]

Not "stolen" but copied. Google was not deprived of anything whatsoever.

[x0x0]

No, exclusivity of the inventions and knowledge was a -- perhaps the -- key piece of value they held.

[earthtourist]

Claiming that exclusivity is they key value is ludicrous.

The key value of autonomous vehicle IP is the ability to autonomously drive vehicles. Unless you're a patent troll.

In this case, the IP was never utilized in the marketplace against them, so they suffered no significant amount of damage.

It's reasonable that they sued to stop the use of their illegally copied IP. It's reasonable that he's punished. But it should be proportionate to the damage, which was minimal.

[x0x0]

That's similarly ludicrous.

Autonomous vehicle IP is enormously more valuable if Google is the sole supplier. The value to Google is significantly less if Google plus multiple competitors have it.

Your claim basically devolves to no harm, no foul, and that's not how our legal system generally works. The attempted theft was of great value.

[earthtourist]

Our legal system does usually involve "proving damages".

Obtaining autonomous vehicle IP is not equivalent to having autonomous vehicle product in the market.

As an example: Boeing could almost certainly publish all of the IP for the 787 jet and not risk spawning a single legitimate competitor. Very few organizations in the world could do anything with it.

What's truly valuable to a Google or Boeing is their financial, engineering, manufacturing, and operations resources. And other less tangible things.

Which is why severe punishment for illegally copying IP doesn't make a lot of sense. Yes, it should be illegal and should be stopped, but it's not that big a deal in most cases.

It just seems like a big deal because "tHey StolE tHe SeCreT cOdEs!" as if it's a James Bond movie.

It's a case of confusing the golden goose with the golden eggs.

[lambdasquirrel]

Well, to nit a point slightly, his comp alone should indicate he was not a small-time engineer. He effectively had a bigger payout that most founders with a semi-successful startup exit.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/03/waymos-uber-lawsuit-reveals-...

[heavenlyblue]

Well, I would like to agree with you, but unfortunately only larger companies have the resource and willingness to actually build the necessary infrastructure to prove someone stealing an idea

[MrSandman]

To your point. He started the program. Not that there is no fault - it's just ironic - Google mad people are "stealing" from them and they made billions by stealing all our data... In the end Google ended up shutting down its main SDC rival's entire program, recuperating all their money including employee salary, and raising 2.5 billion. Not too shabby