I thought we had a thread on this but a search didn't turn one up and thought it deserved one. I don't normally read Seeking Alpha but saw this in Google's finance news regarding Telsa and wanted to update people about the patent status for Tesla on the semi's design.
According to the article, Tesla was awarded patent status on August 14 and their application had cited patents awarded Milton (Nikola's CEO), among others, in their application. Therefore Nikola's patents were considered before awarding Tesla its patent status as unique. The feeling is that the Nikola $2B lawsuit will be dropped now as they would need to argue that the Patent Examiner made a mistake and this rarely succeeds.
Another interesting thing the article goes into is that when Nikola got their patents they did not cite patents awarded to Shell Starship (at least not that the article's writer could find). The Shell Starship patents were awarded before the Nikola ones and there are images in the article showing both designs. Have to say the Nikola one is very similar to my eye. The Tesla semi is then pictured for comparison.
I think the article is an interesting read and if the Nikola lawsuit is dropped obviously good news for Tesla. Here's the SA article which btw appeared on one page on my iPhone but several pages on my MacBook (not sure if it's platform/or OS/or version related but one page is much nicer to scroll through). Tesla: Nikola Likely To Lose Its $2 Billion Suit Against Tesla - Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) | Seeking Alpha
According to the article, Tesla was awarded patent status on August 14 and their application had cited patents awarded Milton (Nikola's CEO), among others, in their application. Therefore Nikola's patents were considered before awarding Tesla its patent status as unique. The feeling is that the Nikola $2B lawsuit will be dropped now as they would need to argue that the Patent Examiner made a mistake and this rarely succeeds.
Another interesting thing the article goes into is that when Nikola got their patents they did not cite patents awarded to Shell Starship (at least not that the article's writer could find). The Shell Starship patents were awarded before the Nikola ones and there are images in the article showing both designs. Have to say the Nikola one is very similar to my eye. The Tesla semi is then pictured for comparison.
I think the article is an interesting read and if the Nikola lawsuit is dropped obviously good news for Tesla. Here's the SA article which btw appeared on one page on my iPhone but several pages on my MacBook (not sure if it's platform/or OS/or version related but one page is much nicer to scroll through). Tesla: Nikola Likely To Lose Its $2 Billion Suit Against Tesla - Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) | Seeking Alpha
