SAN FRANCISCO – Uber says it hired a former Google engineer now accused of stealing trade secrets even though the company knew at the time that he had information that didn’t belong to him.
Uber hired Anthony Levandowski last August to head Uber’s project on self-driving cars, something he worked on at Google. Uber is asserting that then-CEO Travis Kalanick told Levandowski not to bring the material with him and that Levandowski assured the company that he had destroyed the five discs containing Google information.
The scenario sketched in a Thursday court filing marks the first time that Uber has acknowledged it knew Levandowski may have left his job at Google with some of its intellectual property.
Levandowski’s lawyers didn’t respond to requests to comment. Uber recently fired Levandowski.
