Autonomous Theft

Big IP theft news coming out of the Valley this PM.

The New York Times and others are reporting that Anthony Levandowski, a self-driving technology guru, was charged by federal prosecutors on Tuesday with 33 counts of theft and attempted theft of trade secrets from Google.

This could present a new front in the all-out IP war between the major autonomous driving players: Uber, Google’s self-driving outfit, Waymo, potentially others.

The cause of action? Mr. Levandowski is alleged to have downloaded more than 14k files containing “critical information about Googles autonomous-vehicle research before leaving the company in 2016.” And then transferred those files to his personal laptop…which was a no-no.

The files he’s alleged to have stolen contained drawings and schematics pertaining to circuitry and LIDAR laser-sensors used in Google’s self-driving cars.

Here’s what the U.S. attorney, David L. Anderson, had to say in a statement issued by the DOJ: “All of us have the right to change jobs; none of us has the right to fill our pockets on the way out the door. Theft is not innovation.”

If convicted of the charges against him, Levandowski faces a maximum sentence of 10 years and a fine of $250,000. Leave those USB sticks at home, kids!

Cyber Insecurity

Some veddy interesting news on the cybersecurity front has reared its ugly head the last couple days.

First, VMware confirmed via CRN yesterday that proprietary source code from its ESX server hypervisor (server virtualization software) had been posted online, but in a blog post about the incident, the director of VMware’s Security Response Center said the posted code was created sometime in 2003 and 2004.

That raises questions as to relevance, according to CRN, with VMware explaining that “the fact that it has been made public does not necessarily put VMware customers at risk.”

Yet given the large number of providers that run vSphere, it could have “a broad and widespread impact.”

Here’s the blog post from VMware — for those potentially impacted, one to keep an eye on.

This just as the Obama Administration comes out against the current House cybersecurity bill entitled the “Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act,” or “CISPA,”  a law proposed last November by U.S. Rep. Michael Rogers (R-MI) and 111 co-sponsors that would allow the voluntary sharing of attack and threat information between the U.S. Government and security cleared technology and manufacturing companies to try and ensure the security of networks against patterns of attack.

CISPA was reported out of committee on December 1, 2011, but has yet to be debated or brought to a vote.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has also come out against the bill, concerned that the bill’s broad warnings would leave little protection for individual consumers and not provide effective judicial oversight for the types of monitoring the bill would allow.

If, in the meantime, you’re looking for some industry thought leadership on the topic of security, IBM’s own Marc Van Zadelhoff, the director of strategy for IBM’s still relatively new Security Solutions Division, look no further than this podcast interview (MP3, 17:45 minutes, 10.2 MB) where Marc provides extensive insight into IBM’s approach to security intelligence and compliance. You can also read a transcript here. (36.4KB, PDF)

IBM Breaks U.S. Patent Record, Tops Patent List for 19th Consecutive Year

At this point, IBM’s annual patent leadership is almost a bit of a yawner.

IBM announced today it set a new U.S. patent record in 2011, marking the 19th consecutive year that the company has led the annual list of patent recipients. IBM inventors earned a record 6,180 U.S. patents in 2011, more than quadrupling Hewlett-Packard’s issuances and exceeding by six times those of Oracle/Sun.

You know, the awe-inspiring, intellectual property-excited kind of yawn.

I say that, because IBM announced it set a new U.S. patent record in 2011, marketing the 19^th consecutive year the company has led the annual list of patent recipients.

IBM inventors earned a record 6,180 U.S. patents in 2011, more than quadrupling Hewlett-Packard’s issuances and exceeding by six times those of Oracle/Sun.

Averaged out, that’s 16.93 patents per day!

In 2011, more than 8,000 IBMers residing in 46 different U.S. States and 36 countries were responsible for the company’s record-breaking 2011 patent tally.

IBM inventors who reside outside the U.S. contributed to more than 26% of the company’s 2011 patents.

The more than 6,000 patents IBMers received in 2011 represent a range of inventions that enable new innovations and add significant value to the company’s products, services, including smarter solutions for retail, banking, healthcare, transportation and other industries.

These patented inventions also span a wide range of computing technologies poised to support a new generation of more cognitive, intelligent and insight-driven systems, processes and infrastructures for smarter commerce, shopping, medicine, transportation, and more.