Levandowski Pardon Highlights Importance of Proactive Trade Secret Protection

Late in the evening on the final day of his presidency, Donald Trump pardoned Anthony Levandowski, infamous “tech bro” and trade secret thief. Just five months earlier, Levandowski was sentenced to 18 months in prison after he pled guilty to stealing trade secrets from his employer, Google. In what the sentencing judge called the “biggest trade secret crime [he had] ever seen,” Levandowski downloaded thousands of files about Google’s driverless car technology just before departing to start a competing autonomous vehicle company. The Levandowski pardon left many shaking their heads in disbelief. For while no one can plan for a once-in-a-million presidential pardon, every company can take steps to prevent trade secret theft from occurring in the first place—long before the trade secrets are used to build competing products, long before lawyers, judges and expensive litigation, and even before the would-be trade secret thief makes off with the goods.