Fleet telematics provider Samsara Inc., embroiled in a legal battle with rival Motive Technologies, has filed a new lawsuit in a California court accusing Motive’s CEO and the company’s executives of engaging in a “multi-year campaign to procure Samsara Trade Secrets” to compete with Samsara in the fleet management market.
“Samsara’s new lawsuit seeks to stop Motive’s calculated campaign — personally driven by Motive’s CEO and founder, Shoaib Makani — to steal and exploit our trade secrets to avoid the significant investments needed to independently develop its own business,” said Adam Simons, head of corporate communication for Samsara, in a statement to FreightWaves.
The suit, filed late Tuesday in the Superior Court of California for San Francisco County, alleges that Motive and its team hired former Samsara employees specifically to glean confidential information about Samsara’s internal operations, sales strategies and product plans.
“Motive then used Samsara’s proprietary information to develop its own products and grow its customer base, and compete unfairly with Samsara in the market,” according to the complaint.
Late Wednesday, Motive responded to the allegations in the latest complaint.
“While Samsara pursues a loser’s strategy focused on litigation rather than innovation, at Motive we remain focused on serving our customers and building exceptional AI technology that makes our roads safer,” a Motive spokesperson told FreightWaves. “Samsara’s latest lawsuit is yet another attempt to distract from the fact that Motive delivers superior AI technology and value to customers.”
The two fleet telematics companies have been in a legal fight since January after Samsara filed a lawsuit against Motive for alleged patent infringement and false advertising in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware.
In August, U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika granted Motive’s motion to transfer the case from Delaware to the Northern District of California, stating that although Samsara and Motive were incorporated in Delaware, most of the alleged conduct by Motive’s leadership team occurred from Motive offices in San Francisco, where both companies are headquartered. In her opinion, she wrote that “there are no allegations that any of the conduct at issue occurred in, from, or even near Delaware. Neither party is alleged to maintain an office or employ individuals in Delaware.”
Legal battle continues
In February, Samsara filed a companion complaint with the International Trade Commission (ITC), alleging that Motive infringed on Samsara’s patents related to its vehicle telematics, fleet management and video-based safety systems.
Motive filed a countersuit against Samsara in mid-February, alleging near-mirror claims against Samsara for patent infringement, false advertising, fraud, misappropriation of trade secrets, defamation, and intentional interference with business relations.
The complaint, filed on Feb. 15 in the U.S. District for the Northern District of California, alleges that Samsara uses “unethical, improper and unlawful tactics” in an attempt to compete with Motive for market share in the fleet telematics industry.
“Samsara has engaged in these tactics because it continues to lag behind Motive in its technology,” Motive alleges in the 87-page complaint, referring to its AI dashcam and fleet-management technology.
Motive claims that over a nearly six-year period, beginning in 2016 and running through at least June 2022, “multiple Samsara design engineers and employees falsely posed as Motive customers, set up accounts on Motive’s platform” in an effort to steal its technology,” the lawsuit alleged.
In June, U.S. District Judge James Donato ordered a stay of the Motive’s cases “in light of the related proceedings in the District of Delaware and with the ITC. In a hearing on Oct. 31, Donato said the case will remain stayed “pending further order of the Court.” He ordered lead counsel for Motive and Samsara to meet in-person in Washington on Nov. 6 “for the purposes of exchanging documents to facilitate settlement.”
On Wednesday, attorneys for Motive and Samsara filed declarations with the court pursuant to the judge’s Oct. 31 order, stating that counsel met on Nov. 6 to discuss the scheduling of a settlement conference with the ITC mediator sometime in January.
In his declaration, Motive’s attorney C. Bryan Wilson, a partner at Williams & Connolly LLP, wrote that despite “the court’s admonitions at the Oct. 31 hearing that the parties should
be trying to narrow and resolve their disputes rather than expanding them, and that it was “ridiculous” to have multiple pending cases between the parties in multiple jurisdictions, on November 12, 2024, Samsara, represented by a different law firm, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP, filed a new lawsuit against Motive in yet another new jurisdiction, the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of San Francisco, alleging theft of trade secrets.”
In his declaration, Wilson said Motive learned of this lawsuit independently and that Samsara allegedly did not advise him or the court of this imminent filing at the Oct. 31 hearing or on Nov. 6, when lead counsel met in-person to discuss a possible settlement agreement.
Motive fires back before ITC hearing
Two days prior to the ITC’s evidentiary hearing, which started Thursday, a pre-hearing brief prepared by Megan H. Wantland, investigative attorney for the Office of Unfair Import Investigations of the ITC, to Administrative Law Judge Doris Johnson Hines, was made public.
The 212-page brief, which was largely redacted, stated that “Staff does not expect the evidence to establish a violation as to the Asserted Patents,” which was alleged in Samsara’s complaint.
“As evidenced in the ITC pre-trial briefing, which concludes Motive did not infringe on Samsara’s patents, it’s evident that these baseless claims reflect a losing strategy focused more on litigation than innovation,” Motive said.
In March, the ITC voted to conduct an investigation into Samsara’s patent infringement complaint against Motive. According to the ITC docket, once the evidentiary hearing concludes, which is similar to a district court trial, Hines is scheduled to post her initial determination in March 2025 in the patent infringement case.
In a statement, Motive said Samsara’s litigation strategy isn’t about protecting its intellectual property, but is “an attempt to limit competition and prevent customers from accessing the best technology.”
However, Samsara argued that Hines, who is overseeing the case, has not ruled on the merits of Samsara’s patent infringement claims.
“Motive’s misrepresentation of the Staff’s preliminary views is an attempt to manipulate public perception with inaccuracies and premature conclusions,” Simons said.
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