A popular tech provider in the trucking industry has filed suit against a competitor, alleging intellectual property theft. San Francisco-based IoT company Samsara, which provides ELD, telematics, safety cameras and more, claims fleet management provider Motive Technologies Inc. has engaged in illegal conduct that includes patent infringement and false advertisement.
Samsara is asking the court to enter judgment recognizing Motive’s infringement of the company’s patents covering several of its solutions in fleet management and driver safety included within Samsara’s telematics, video-based safety and sustainability solutions, to permanently stop Motive’s conduct. The company is also requesting the court order Motive to compensate Samsara for its losses and damages under state and federal law.
Samsara Founders Sanjit Biswas and John Bicket said via statement that prospective customers would remark how similar Motive’s products appeared to Samsara's in terms of form and functionality. That escalated, the pair claimed, into "Motive deploying misleading marketing campaigns and sales tactics, which led us to take a closer look."
In 2022, while investigating a deceptive third-party benchmark report about Samsara products that Biswas and Bicket allege Motive bankrolled, "we discovered a comprehensive, years-long campaign by Motive to copy Samsara – from our patented technologies down to our company mission statement ... Looking at what a competitor is doing can be acceptable and even productive in that it might spur innovation to help better serve customers," they said. "But that is not what Motive is doing here ... We believe that integrity matters in our industry, and the customers we serve deserve transparency and technology partners who truly invest in and prioritize innovation. Motive’s leadership team has taken the opposite approach, focusing its business strategy on stealing our intellectual property. This has led us to resort to litigation today to protect our company and the substantial investment we have made over multiple years into R&D. It is important for our entire industry that innovation continues. Our customers run the world’s critical infrastructure, and they deserve the best technology to increase the safety, efficiency, and sustainability of their operations."
The lawsuit, filed in a Delaware federal court, states that Motive – formerly known as KeepTruckin – based much of its product line and even its business strategy on routinely stealing Samsara’s technologies and fraudulently accessing Samsara’s platforms. The filing asserts that Motive illegally accessed Samsara’s platform, copied Samsara’s marketing materials and made unsubstantiated advertising statements.
Motive Co-Founder and CEO Shoaib Makani said in a statement Thursday to CCJ that "Samsara’s allegations and associated campaign against Motive are meritless. They are a result of Samsara’s inability to develop competitive AI technology and the fact that they are losing customers, especially large enterprise accounts, to Motive. This courtroom tactic is an attempt to limit competition and we will fight these baseless accusations to the fullest extent."
Samsara claims Motive stole its core technologies, infringing three of its patents that protect its flagship IoT devices, data platform and features as well as commissioned two intentionally flawed and misleading benchmarking studies to test and compare Motive’s product against Samsara’s.
Samsara said in a release that it had previously asked Motive to cease these unlawful activities but that the company had continued to introduce copycat products as recently as November 2023.
Samsara’s filing says Motive’s director of product continued to attempt to access Samsara’s platform, evidenced by Samsara's activity logs, even after Motive claimed to have asked its employees to stop. Samsara’s evidence against Motive includes activity records showing that Motive employees used invented credentials to view Samsara’s dashboard more than 20,600 times from 2018 to 2022; call records showing Motive employees contacting Samsara customer service and pretending to be Samsara customers; and video footage showing Makani and Chief Product Officer Jairam Ranganathan testing and commenting on the performance of Samsara's products and features.
Solera subsidiary Omnitracs filed a similar lawsuit against Motive in December.
