THINGS DON'T LOOK GOOD FOR UBER AS GOOGLE’S FIGHT AGAINST THEM AS A TURN FOR THE CRIMINAL

Things don’t look good for Uber and autonomous vehicle wunderkind Anthony Levandowski, the former Google engineer who now leads the startup’s robocar program.

This week, US District Court William Alsup made two decisive decisions in the lawsuit between Google’s autonomous vehicle spinoff Waymoand Uber. You know, the one accusing Levandowski of swiping 14,000 confidential documents from and taking them with him to Uber.

First, Alsup rebuffed Uber’s efforts to settle the case in arbitration, so the drama will play out publicly during a trial. Waymo loved that. “We welcome the court’s decision today, and we look forward to holding Uber responsible in court for its misconduct,” it said in a statement.

More troubling for Levandowski, Alsup referred the case to the US Attorney’s office “for investigation of possible theft of trade secrets based on the evidentiary record supplied thus far.” Translated from legalese, Alsup thinks something criminal might have happened here and that the feds ought to take a look. That raises the possibility of prison time for Levandowski.

Such a referral is “quite, quite rare,” says Peter Toren, an intellectual property lawyer and former Department of Justice attorney. “For a judge to do that, he must believe there’s a lot of smoke, if not fire, for criminal violations.”

Things could go from bad to worse for Uber if the judge grants Waymo’s request to put the brakes on the startup’s robocar testing. As of Friday night, the court had not yet unsealed Alsup’s decision on that, so stay tuned.