This story showed more than meeting or talking though. Agreements of some sort were signed, and he was asked to move out to Google and work with them.
Sounds like Google's position is that they did do what was alleged, but that Attia had signed terms that made it legal.
What you described above is similar. Legal, but shitty. Some amount of information obtained under false pretenses is surely passed to the "clean room" team. Otherwise, why meet with the target at all?
Edit: This Verge story has pretty good detail on the backstory: https://www.theverge.com/2015/2/17/8048779/google-x-eli-atti...