Uber has fired former Google employee and the man at the centre of its self-driving dispute with the tech giant, Anthony Levandowski, for refusing to cooperate in court.

When ordered by a federal judge to provide testimony, Levandowski used his right to the Fifth Amendment in order to avoid self-incrimination. Despite this, Uber continuously urged the engineer to provide his side of the story, though after missing an internal deadline to hand over information, he was fired.

“Over the last few months Uber has provided significant evidence to the court to demonstrate that our self-driving technology has been built independently,” wrote Angela L. Padilla, Uber’s associate general counsel for employment and litigation, in an email to employees, according to The New York Times. “Over that same period, Uber has urged Anthony to fully cooperate in helping the court get to the facts and ultimately helping to prove our case.”

She added: “We take our obligations under the court order very seriously, and so we have chosen to terminate his employment at Uber.”

The lawsuit filed by Waymo, formerly Google self-driving car project, in February surrounds allegations that Levandowski downloaded over 14,000 confidential design files on his departure from Google. These files reportedly relate to hardware systems including Waymo’s LiDAR laser-based scanning and mapping technology.

Following his departure from Google, Levandowski went on to co-found self-driving truck company Otto, which was picked up by Uber last year for $660m. And it is in these self-driving trucks where Waymo claims the LiDAR circuit board bares ‘a striking resemblance’ to its own LiDAR design.

Uber would deny stealing Waymo’s self-driving tech last month, hinging its defence on two key points. The first being it has been unable to locate any of the ‘stolen’ files and, secondly, that its LiDAR technology is completely different to what is detailed in Waymo’s files.