A court has ordered Anthony Levandowski, a former Waymo engineer and onetime head of Uber Technologies Inc.’s autonomous driving group, to pay Google LLC $179 million in connection with a high-profile legal dispute centered on self-driving cars.

The ruling was first reported by Reuters on Wednesday evening. It affirms a December decision by an arbitration panel that found Levandowski had violated his contract with Google and engaged in unfair competition.

Levandowski, a prominent figure in the autonomous vehicle ecosystem, joined Google during the early days of its efforts to build a self-driving car and later held senior roles at Waymo. He left in 2016 to found a competing autonomous vehicle company called Otto Trucking LLC that is at the center of this week’s court decision. 

Soon after its establishment, Otto was acquired by Uber in a reported $680 million deal in which Levandowski became the head of the ride-sharing giant’s autonomous driving group. The controversy erupted in February 2017 when Waymo filed suit against Uber, alleging that it used trade secrets stolen by Levandowski before his departure to build its technology stack. The Google sister company accused its former engineer of taking about 14,000 blueprints and other confidential files with him when he left to found Otto.

Levandowski is facing separate criminal charges for allegedly stealing trade secrets. The case that produced the $179 million penalty this week, in turn, is a civil one. The arbitration panel handed down the judgment after finding that Levandowski’s departure from Waymo to launch a rival company amounted to a breach of his employment contract as well as unfair competition.

What adds another wrinkle to the saga is that Levandowski also had a contract with Uber, since he joined the ride-hailing giant after its acquisition of Otto. Uber indemnifies workers under its employment agreements and may be on the hook for the $179 million penalty. However, filings seen by Reuters indicate that Uber plans to challenge paying for the judgment.

There’s currently another high-profile legal dispute in Silicon Valley involving a prominent tech firm and a former top engineer. Apple Inc. is suing Gerard Williams III, its former head processor designer, for allegedly committing breach of contract and breach of duty of loyalty when he departed the iPhone maker last year to launch a chip startup. Williams has fired back with a counterclaim charging that the contract in question is not enforceable and that Apple is trying to “suffocate the creation of new technologies.”

Photo: Waymo