To keep that agreement secret from Google, the Waymo lawyers said, Mr. Levandowski
and Uber needed some cover, so they hatched a plan for Mr. Levandowski to create a self-driving-car start-up named Otto, which Uber would then acquire.
Judge Alsup said Wednesday that Waymo’s lawyers had presented strong evidence
that Mr. Levandowski had downloaded troves of valuable information from Google before leaving the company and had tried to erase his tracks after doing so.
Mr. Levandowski said last week that he would stop working on Uber’s Lidar system — a shorthand term for light detection
and ranging technology, a key hardware component in the operation of autonomous vehicles — for the duration of the case.
Waymo’s lawyers said they believed that there might be additional evidence
that Mr. Levandowski had shared the company’s technology with Uber and had used it in Uber designs, but that Uber was withholding that evidence.
Waymo’s lawyers also said that Mr. Levandowski could offer similar proof were he willing to cooperate in a deposition.