A driverless car expert who admitted stealing secrets from Google has been sentenced to 18 months in prison in California.

The Daily Telegraph reports that Anthony Levandowski, who helped found Google’s self-driving car project, pleaded guilty to downloading documents containing data about the company’s work and accessing one of them after he had left to found his own trucking startup.

Sentencing him in a San Francisco court, judge William Alsup said he was imposing prison time as a deterrent because a non-jail term would be “a green light to every future brilliant engineer to steal trade secrets. Prison time is the answer to that.”

The Telegraph adds that Mr Levandowski apologised to his former colleagues and said he had “come to terms” with his actions in the three and a half years since.

Picture – LinkedIn