Google's driverless car division, Waymo LLC, is getting its holy grail of discovery.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Wednesday rejected Anthony Levandowski's attempt to block production of a due diligence report in which he may or may not have acknowledged illegally downloading driverless car technology files from Google before leaving the company. Levandowski formed his own autonomous vehicle companies in 2016 and sold one of them to Uber for $680 million.

Diego M. Radzinschi / The National Law Journal

“Mr. Levandowski fails to articulate any persuasive reasons why disclosure of the Stroz report should be barred in this civil litigation, for the possibility of admissions against his interest is a valid function of civil discovery,” Judge Evan Wallach wrote for a unanimous panel in Waymo v. Uber Technologies. Judges Pauline Newman and Kara Stoll concurred.

Levandowski, who was fired from Uber earlier this year after asserting his Fifth Amendment rights, had argued that his communications with investigative firm Stroz Friedberg were privileged under the common interest doctrine because he and Uber had anticipated IP suits by Google when arranging the sale of Ottomotto LLC.

In a separate ruling authored by Newman, the court also declined to order the case into binding arbitration.

The upshot of the rulings is that Waymo will now receive a potentially explosive report potentially linking Levandowski's conduct to Uber, which has maintained that it never acquired or used any Waymo trade secrets. But Waymo has little time to use the report, as trial is scheduled to begin Oct. 10.

Michael Brophy, a partner at Withersworldwide whose practice includes IP litigation, said Waymo will have an interesting decision to make, since discovery is closed and the report is likely to point toward new chains of inquiry. “I imagine the plaintiffs are not going to want to push off the trial date,” he said. But “nonetheless, they would have pretty good grounds” for postponement if necessary to take more discovery.