Waymo LLC, Alphabet Inc.’s self-driving car division, has asked for a $2.6 billion judgment in its intellectual property theft case against ride-hailing company Uber Technologies Inc., according to statements made by Uber’s legal team.

On Wednesday, Waymo tried to convince a judge to delay the upcoming trial, which is set to take place on Oct. 10, so that it can spend more time sifting through new evidence it had obtained from Uber. Meanwhile, Uber has pushed for the case to continue as scheduled, and its legal team argued that the payments Waymo seeks for the alleged trade theft are “astronomical figures using a methodology that is not reliable.”

Waymo filed its lawsuit in February, claiming that former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski stole key LiDAR technology before he left to found his own autonomous vehicle company, Otto, which was later acquired by Uber for more than $680 million. Waymo said that it discovered the alleged trade theft when one of its supplies mistakenly sent over machine drawings of Uber’s LiDAR circuit board, which appeared to be nearly identical to Waymo’s own LiDAR technology.

After investigating the matter, Waymo said, it discovered that Levandowski downloaded more than 14,000 confidential files before leaving Google. Waymo later claimed that Uber intentionally hid its self-driving tech from the court. “They were hiding a [LiDAR] device, which Uber only revealed to Waymo after one of its engineers was forced to admit it existed,” Waymo’s lawyers said in April.

Uber initially defended Levandowski, but the company later terminated him when he refused to turn over his personal files related to the case. At the time Angela Padilla, Uber’s associate general counsel for employment and litigation, said in an internal email to employees that Uber had “urged [Levandowski] to fully cooperate in helping the court get to the facts and ultimately helping to prove our case.”

Levandowski’s lawyers argued against the termination, saying that it violated his Fifth Amendment rights. Meanwhile, Waymo has continued to argue that Uber’s management either failed to do their due diligence or were complicit in the trade theft, and that the company was simply using Levandowski as a scapegoat.

Photo: Waymo