Google's self-driving car spinoff, Waymo, filed a lawsuit in February accusing Uber of acquiring its trade secrets from a former Google employee named Anthony Levandowski.

The lawsuit is quickly approaching its scheduled trial date of October 10. Now, one of Uber's last-ditch attempts to head off the impending courtroom showdown has failed.

Uber has been asking (PDF) to move the case into arbitration since shortly after it was filed. Uber argues that Google's real dispute is with Levandowski, a former Google employee who allegedly took more than 14,000 confidential files on his way out the door. Uber doesn't dispute that took place, and Levandowski has asserted his Fifth Amendment rights rather than answer questions about it. Levandowski isn't a defendant in this lawsuit, but Google has a separate arbitration against him, which is ongoing.

US District Judge William Alsup rejected Uber's attempt to move the case into arbitration, and now the judge has been upheld (PDF) by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Uber argues that Waymo's case is all about Levandowski's alleged violations of his employment agreement, which is subject to arbitration. But Waymo has said it's not relying on Levandowski employment agreements to prove its case in the lawsuit against Uber, and those agreements aren't mentioned in the complaint. That ultimately swayed the appeals court, as it did Judge Alsup.

While both companies signed contracts with Levandowski, there is no contract between Uber and Waymo, companies that are competitors and rivals.

"The [district] court applied the governing legal standard and determined that the Defendants had not satisfied it," concluded the three-judge appeals panel. "The district court correctly concluded that arbitration should not be compelled."

In a separate ruling (PDF), the same appeals panel held that Uber must hand over a key report on its acquisition of Levandowski's startup, Otto. Uber purchased Otto last year for $680 million, paid mostly in stock. The report may hold important clues about what Uber knew about Levandowski's time at Google as well as the litigation risk associated with hiring him.

A magistrate judge ruled that Uber had to hand over the report, which was produced by the firm Stroz Friedberg. Uber objected to the order at the time, but did not appeal that ruling to the Federal Circuit. Levandowski, however, did. Now the Federal Circuit has agreed that it must be handed over.

"[I]t is apparent that Mr. Levandowski cannot invoke attorney-client privilege or work-product protection," the panel writes. "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."

In an e-mailed comment to Ars, an Uber spokesperson said the company didn't join Levandowski's appeal and is ready to disclose the report to Waymo. She added:

While Waymo has obtained over 238,000 pages of production documents from Uber and conducted a dozen inspections over 61 hours of our facilities, source code, documents, and engineers' computers, there's still no evidence that any files have come to Uber, let alone that they're being used.

"Since filing this case, Waymo has found significant and direct evidence that Uber is using stolen Waymo trade secrets in its technology," a Waymo spokesperson told Ars via e-mail. "We are still reviewing materials received late in the discovery process, and we look forward to reviewing the Stroz Report and related materials."