In a fresh legal squall swirling around the future of automated driving, a Virginia-based robotics firm has taken aim at Tesla, accusing the electric-vehicle titan of quietly stepping on years of patented innovation.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Alexandria, claims that Perrone Robotics built a flexible robotics operating system designed to liberate engineers from the old days of customizing hardware and software for every single machine. According to the complaint, that breakthrough wasn’t just pioneering — it was patented, five times over.
And those patents, the company argues, have been powering Tesla’s self-driving software for years.
The filing says that every Tesla outfitted with any iteration of Autopilot over the past six years — from road-ubiquitous Model Ys to the rest of the fleet — uses technology that overlaps with Perrone’s protected work. One of those patents, the company notes, was even offered to Tesla back in 2017.
Now Perrone Robotics is asking the court to put a stop to the alleged infringement and award damages, leaving Tesla — which hasn’t commented — on the defensive.
The broader backdrop? Tesla has spent years trying to persuade investors that it’s on the cusp of dominating autonomous driving, from personal vehicles to its long-promised robotaxi fleet. But this case adds a new twist to that ambition, suggesting that the foundation of Tesla’s autonomy push may collide head-on with earlier robotics innovation.
The legal battle is just beginning, and for Tesla, the road ahead may be a lot less automated than it hoped.
