Editor's note: This post was updated Nov. 15 with a correction. A previous version of this article said a former Motive director gave a report during the ITC proceeding. That report was rather part of Samsara's allegations in its recent filing, not a finding in the ITC proceedings.
Trucking technology provider Samsara Inc. continues its legal battle against fleet management provider Motive Technologies Inc.
Samsara on Wednesday filed another complaint against Motive, now alleging that it misappropriated trade secrets and confidential information, obtained via Samsara employees under confidentiality agreements, to “clone” Samsara’s products, copy its tagline and mission statement and mimic its website designs.
Samsara is demanding a jury trial and is seeking monetary relief against Motive.
“Instead of dedicating its own time and resources to build its business lawfully (as Samsara itself did), Motive went the unlawful route of using Samsara’s valuable and secret information to do so, saving years of research and development and accelerating Motive’s sales at Samsara’s expense. Motive’s trade secret misappropriation is willful and malicious and must be stopped, and Samsara must be compensated for the harm Motive has already caused to Samsara’s business and operations,” the complaint document states.
The company previously filed a lawsuit in a Delaware court against Motive in January for patent infringement and false advertisement. It followed that lawsuit with a complaint to the International Trade Commission (ITC) also for patent infringement.
There have been no outcomes yet in regard to Samsara’s previous filings, said Samsara’s Head of Corporate Communications Adam Simons. Motive filed a motion to terminate Samsara’s lawsuit in the ITC, but the ITC denied that motion in June. The ITC hearing is scheduled for Thursday.
Ahead of the hearing on Tuesday, Motive shared a preliminary opinion issued by the Office of Unfair Import Investigations, an independent participant in the ITC investigation who represents the public interest. Megan Wantland, investigative attorney at the Office of Unfair Import Investigations, an independent participant in the ITC investigation who represents the public interest, stated she “does not expect the evidence to establish a violation of Section 337 as to the Asserted Patents.”
During the ITC proceedings leading up to the hearing, Samsara said it discovered that “Motive’s misconduct went beyond patent infringement” to include misappropriation of trade secrets and other proprietary information, according to the Nov. 12 filing with the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of San Francisco.
Motive issued this statement in response:
“Samsara’s latest lawsuit is yet another attempt to distract from the fact that Motive delivers superior AI technology and value to customers. As evidenced in the ITC pre-trial briefing released last night, 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. At Motive, we remain focused on serving our customers and building exceptional AI technology that makes our roads safer.”
Motive fires back in legal tussle with Samsara, files countersuit
During the ITC proceedings, Samsara claims it found evidence that Motive had possession of documents that summarized Samsara’s confidential and proprietary business strategies and information. Wednesday’s filing states that Motive procured these trade secrets by identifying, recruiting and hiring Samsara employees, poaching junior to senior-level employees from Samsara’s sales operations team, a senior account executive and others by offering outsized compensation packages. Samsara asserts that Motive contacted those employees directly or through third-party intermediaries while they were still employed by Samsara and encouraged them to copy or download information before departing the company for Motive.
Samsara's allegations include a statement from a former Motive director:
“[Motive] almost will completely change trajectory or strategy on their sales motion or their overall market motion based on Samsara … They are obsessively compulsive about what Samsara is doing … to a point where they’re even trying to go and talk to former Samsara or current Samsara employees to try and recruit them in to just understand the inner mechanics of how Samsara has designed their organization and how they become so successful."
Samsara’s filing claims that Motive then used the company’s information – confidential competitive playbooks, sales strategies, blueprints for marketing campaigns and Salesforce files that contained hundreds of unique accounts and opportunities – in the development, creation and commercial marketing and sale of its own products designed to compete with Samsara, resulting in “damages and irreparable harm.”
Samsara said its trade secrets are critical to its success in innovating its development of products and services, creating and maintaining effective business strategies and growing and investing in its customer base, and Motive’s actions have devalued those secrets, likely interfering with Samsara’s position in the market and likely resulting in a reduction of sales and erosions of prices of Samsara products and services.
"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," Samsara added to its statement. "The lawsuit alleges that, under Makani’s direction, Motive has hired former Samsara employees specifically to pressure them for confidential insights into our internal operations, sales strategies, and product plans. It also asserts that Makani has personally conducted detailed interviews, even with junior employees, to get confidential, trade secret information about Samsara. Samsara embraces fair competition, but we believe Motive’s actions are anything but fair. We are committed to defending our company's innovation and the hard work of our dedicated employees."
