SAN FRANCISCO — Waymo may get an edge over rival Uber as the two head into an explosive trade secrets trial this fall after a federal judge on Wednesday said he’ll likely tell the jury how Uber’s lawyers “misled the court” and repeatedly failed to produce documents that could be important in the case.

That revelation came after a tense volley in a San Francisco courtroom, with tempers flaring and voices rising as both sides argued over the whereabouts of 14,000 confidential documents that former Uber engineer Anthony Levandowski is accused of taking from Google. Attorneys representing Waymo, Google’s self-driving car arm, claim Uber’s lawyers hold copies of at least some of those documents, and have refused to turn them over.

“If you’re aware that you have stolen material, you need to disclose it. You need to produce it. And we’ve been asking from the outset of this case for them to produce these stolen documents,” Waymo’s lawyer, Charles Verhoeven, said Wednesday.

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As Waymo v. Uber legal battle heats up, Uber to submit allegedly stolen tech for exam Those documents represent the key smoking-gun evidence that so far is missing from Waymo’s case accusing rival Uber of pilfering key self-driving car trade secrets. Even if Waymo can’t force Uber’s team to produce the documents, telling the jury that Uber has failed to disclose information could bolster Waymo’s position.

The case, set for trial in October, is gearing up to be the Silicon Valley legal battle of the year. It centers on Levandowski, a former Google engineer who is accused of making off with confidential trade secrets before quitting and forming his own self-driving trucking startup, Otto. Uber later acquired Otto, and Levandowski took the helm of Uber’s autonomous vehicle program, which Waymo says allowed Uber to use the trade secrets in its own self-driving cars. Uber fired Levandowski in May over the controversy. The company also recently lost its CEO, Travis Kalanick, and is searching for a replacement.

Uber’s lawyers from Morrison & Foerster recently disclosed that their firm has some information taken from Levandowski’s electronic devices. Waymo is convinced that information contains stolen documents, which it says Uber’s team spent months hiding from the court.

“Wrong,” Uber’s lawyer, Arturo Gonzalez, said Wednesday. His firm has some information, he said, but not the allegedly stolen documents.

But U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who is presiding over the case, seemed to side with Waymo.

“I am concerned that Mr. Gonzalez failed to disclose that he had the documents and took a long time to come clean,” Alsup said. “Maybe he can get on the stand and explain it away. But I am inclined … to tell the jury exactly this scenario: that he was ordered to come clean, did not come clean, ordered to come clean again, and did not come clean — finally in June or July came clean.”

In response, Gonzalez accused the judge of buying into a “complete false premise.”

The judge fired back: “It’s true that you misled the court. You misled the judge time and time again.”

Gonzalez, getting louder, told the judge that the notion that his firm has or ever had the stolen documents is “completely baseless.”

“Here’s what I want you to know,” Gonzalez said, “there will never be a day, never … that anybody proves that MoFo, or Uber, for that matter, was hiding those 14,000 documents.”

(MoFo is a nickname for Gonzalez’s law firm, Morrison & Foerster).

Alsup asked Waymo to write a proposed jury instruction that would inform jurors in October about the fight over those documents, but he did not immediately issue a formal order resolving the dispute.