London, England - A bitter row between Formula 1's top two teams, Ferrari and McLaren, over alleged espionage reached the High Court here this week.
Ferrari engineer Nigel Stepney was fired after being accused of supplying McLaren's chief designer Mike Coughlan with secret Ferrari technical information in April.
It is believed the row revolves around on two computer discs containing 780 pages of material.
At Tuesday's preliminary hearing in a case relating to the intellectual property dimension of the spat, Coughlan and his wife Trudy were ordered to pay costs following an early morning search of their home by officials last week.
Nigel Tozzi, the lawyer representing Ferrari, told judge Michael Briggs that the Coughlans should not have had documents which were found during the search.
The defendants had "behaved disgracefully", he said, adding that Ferrari could have remained "blissfully ignorant" of what had happened had it not been for a tip-off.
McLaren was not represented at the hearing.
Stepney, who denies any wrongdoing, is facing a criminal investigation under a separate process in Italy where Ferrari is based.
Formula 1's governing body, the FIA, is conducting its own investigation into the allegations and has not ruled out any potential punishments, leaving open the possibility of a points deduction for McLaren.
Stepney said he was the victim of a witch-hunt by Ferrari aimed at discrediting him and making an example of anyone who tries to leave the Scuderia.
Denying, categorically, any wrongdoing, Stepney said: "Ferrari is terrified that what I have in my mind is valuable. I guess I know where the bodies have been buried for the last 10 years, there were a lot of controversies."
"Ferrari is unique in Italy, it's a religion. If you go against it, it's like going against the Vatican."