Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit

Contents

H2: What’s a Rich Text element?

The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.

H3: Static and dynamic content editing

A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!

text

H1: This is a Heading 1

This is some paragraph. lorem epsum.

This is a fig caption. This is how it will look like under a video frame as a description.

H4: How to customize formatting for each rich text

Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.

H5: Sample text is being used as a placeholder. Sample text helps you understand how real text may look. Sample text is being used as a placeholder for real text that is normally present.

Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.

H6: How to customize formatting for each rich text

Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.

Block Quote: Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.

This is a heading 3.

  1. Sample text is being used as a placeholder.
  2. Sample text is being used as a placeholder.
  3. Sample text is being used as a placeholder.

This is a heading 2.

  • Sample text is being used as a placeholder.
  • Sample text is being used as a placeholder.
  • Sample text is being used as a placeholder.
# clone openpilot into your home directory
cd ~
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/commaai/openpilot.git

# setup ubuntu environment
openpilot/tools/ubuntu_setup.sh

# build openpilot
cd openpilot && scons -j$(nproc)

comma.ai has been in business 6 years, a lawsuit had to come at some point. But it’s not even about anything good.

It’s brought by notorious autonomous vehicle patent troll Axel Nix!

Thanks to Stable Diffusion for the 'troll in a courtroom being yelled at by a judge' art!

Background

Axel Nix is a 51 year old man living in Birmingham, MI. He apparently used to be an engineer, but has, shall I say, pivoted to a different business model? From his LinkedIn:

I founded Smartpat PLC with a simple vision: Draft and prosecute patents that matter. Patents that truly add value to my clients.

Since Axel’s departure from the ADAS team at HARMAN in 2017, he has taken up AV patent trolling full time. With his company Sucxess LLC (suggested slogan: they put the X in success), he has filed lawsuits against Voyage, AutoX, Pony.ai, Dataspeed, SF Motors, and WeRide Corp. All claiming that they are infringing the same bogus patents.

As far as I can tell, Sucxess LLC produces nothing, has never attempted to produce anything, and has never even won a jury trial about any of their patents. They subsist off of the settlements handed to them by companies who are scared and weak. This is just a straight up shake down, and I’m shocked that it’s allowed by the US court system.

The lawsuit against us

We’ve posted the complaint here. From reading the complaint, he seems to have a 15 year old patent on some auto emergency call system if a car crashes or something, nothing at all to do with what comma.ai does. But that isn’t the point, he is banking on the case never going to trial. The point is he mistook us as an easy target, someone he could shake down for a settlement.

What he didn’t take into account is that comma isn’t run by rational actors in suits sitting on a committee. It’s run by me, George Hotz. I’m willing to lose $1M before I give him $10k. We will hire an amazing legal team, fight this, and while doing so invalidate his patents so they can’t be used against anyone else. Not because it’s rational, but because it’s the right thing to do. No patent troll will ever get a dollar from comma.

Sadly Voyage, AutoX, and Pony.ai appear to have settled, which fuels this illegitimate profession. Hopefully the world understands why appeasement is a bad idea.

How you can help

We really admire what cloudflare did in dealing with patent trolls. If this continues, we want to work to invalidate not just the patents he is wrongfully claiming against us, but his entire patent portfolio. “Patent troll” should not be an acceptable profession in America, or anywhere for that matter!

We will announce more on this soon. Cloudflare’s crowdsourced prior art search was brilliant. And I’m sure it won’t just be us he tries to shake down in this round, with his lawsuit against Dataspeed, he even tried to go after their customers!

If you are being shaken down by Axel Nix and Sucxess LLC, please reach out to us at stoppatenttrolls@comma.ai and let’s work together to combat this menace.