Anthony Levandowski, the former head of Uber Technologies Inc.’s autonomous vehicle unit, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty in March to one count of stealing trade secrets from Alphabet Inc.’s self-driving car company Waymo LLC.

Levandowski will not be going to prison anytime soon, however, as U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that he will be required to enter custody only when the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided. When that will be is anyone’s guess at this time.

In addition to the jail time, Levandowski was ordered to pay $756,499 in restitution to Waymo along with a fine of $95,000.

Prosecutors in the case had been seeking a 27-month sentence, restitution and three years of supervised release. Levandowski’s attorneys were seeking 12 months of home confinement, community service and a fine.

In his ruling, Judge Alsup said a sentence short of imprisonment would have given “a green light to every future brilliant engineer to steal trade secrets,” comparing what Levandowski took to a “competitor’s game plan.” The judge added that Levandowski’s was the “biggest trade secret crime I have ever seen” and that “billions in the future were at play and when those kind of financial incentives are there, good people will do terrible things and that’s what happened here.”

The sentencing puts an end to a longstanding case that has involved drama and two of the biggest tech companies on the planet. It all started when Levandowski left Waymo, known at the time as the Google Car Project, to establish a self-driving truck startup called Otto. Otto was then acquired by Uber for $680 million in August 2016, with Levandowski appointed to lead the Uber autonomous vehicle development team.

In February 2017, Waymo LLC filed a lawsuit against Uber claiming that Levandowski stole some of its autonomous vehicle technology and was using it at Uber. Initially, Uber defended Levandowski and denied all accusations but later fired Levandowski in May 2017 after he refused to cooperate with the court, citing his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. The Uber side of the litigation was settled in 2018 for $245 million.

The penalty for the theft of trade secrets could have been far higher for Levandowski given that he was initially charged in August 2019 with 33 counts of theft and attempted theft of trade secrets from Waymo.

Levandowski is still active in the autonomous-vehicle business, having founded self-driving truck startup Pronto.ai in 2018. It’s not clear what role if any he has at company, though some reports suggest that he’s running the startup.

Photo: Waymo