Samsara awarded $30M over Motive’s marketing claims; Motive beats patent infringement case

Samsara awarded $30.3 million due to Motive’s marketing claims

Samsara’s favorable arbitration ruling stems from false-advertising claims over the 2023 Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) study and platform-access allegations that moved into arbitration. The VTTI study was described as an independent, controlled test-track benchmark of AI dashcams.

The study results were reported in a press release: “Motive’s AI Dashcam successfully alerted drivers to unsafe driving behavior 86% of the time, compared to 21% for Samsara.” The study was also referenced by Motive in its December 2025 S-1 filing.

Hearings occurred in August 2025. The arbitrator issued a sealed decision in February 2026 — the same month the ITC ruling became final.

Samsara disclosed the $30.3 million arbitration award in its updated 10-K filing on March 16. As part of the arbitration, no admission of liability occurred. Shoaib Makani, Motive co-founder and CEO, told employees in an email obtained by FreightWaves, “The arbitrator awarded Samsara a permanent injunction and damages in part related to the Virginia Tech and Strategy Analytics AI benchmarking studies. As a result, we are no longer using the studies.”

Samsara also weighed in. In an email to FreightWaves, Adam Eltoukhy, Samsara chief legal officer, wrote:

“Samsara is focused on our commitment to customer-driven innovation. The facts show Motive committed fraud and made false claims about our product capabilities, misleading prospects and customers.”

“Motive chose to suppress those facts by moving the fraud and false advertising claims we filed in open federal court to a confidential arbitration proceeding, where Motive was justly found liable and ordered to correct its false advertisements, among other things,” Eltoukhy added.

Makani told Motive employees in a company email: “While this decision is not what we expected, it is worth recognizing the broader context here. We beat Samsara in the International Trade Commission. Our own legal case against Samsara for patent infringement and false advertising is advancing in district court and will be heard in a jury trial. You can read about that case here: truthandsafety.com.”

At the time of writing, the original Delaware federal case and the California trade secrets suit remain stayed pending further developments.

ITC clears Motive in patent case, ends import ban threat

The ITC case (Investigation 337-TA-1393) became the most immediate threat to Motive’s supply chain. Samsara sought exclusion orders on AI dashcams and gateways over the three patents. After an evidentiary hearing in March 2025, the administrative law judge issued an initial determination on Sept. 8, 2025, finding no Section 337 violation.

Eight of nine asserted claims were ruled invalid or non-infringed. Samsara failed the domestic industry requirement. The full commission affirmed the no-violation finding in February 2026 and terminated the investigation. Samsara notes they plan to appeal the decision in a federal circuit court.

In the same email obtained by FreightWaves, Makani told employees, “We secured a final victory in the International Trade Commission. In February, the ITC affirmed Judge Johnson Hines’ decision that Motive does not infringe any valid Samsara patent claims, and no violations were found. Samsara spent the past two years using this case to discourage customers from choosing Motive by claiming our products would be barred from the U.S. market, but their strategy failed. This is a win for the nearly 100,000 customers and more than 1 million drivers who rely on our technology to improve the safety of our roads.”

Motive chief legal officer Shu White called the initial September ruling decisive. “Samsara falsely accused Motive of patent infringement in the ITC to stifle competition and disrupt our business,” White said. “But they failed. With this legal attack in the rearview, Motive remains more focused than ever on our mission to improve the safety of our roads.”

No import ban took effect. Motive hardware continues flowing freely into the U.S. market.

Legal battle a decade in the making

The rivalry traces to the mid-2010s when both companies raced to dominate commercial-vehicle telematics. Motive, founded in 2013 as KeepTruckin, released early ELDs and its first vehicle gateway in 2015. Samsara launched its own gateway in 2016.

Both Motive and Samsara claim the other began spying through fake customer accounts around that time. Motive alleges Samsara created more than 30 fictitious accounts starting in April 2016 to copy platform features. Samsara counters that Motive began unauthorized access in October 2017, viewing its dashboard more than 20,000 times over the next five years while imitating product designs and marketing.

Tensions simmered through 2019 as both firms rolled out successive AI dashcams and gateways. Motive accuses Samsara of poaching a key hardware engineer in late 2019 to shortcut development. Samsara points to Motive’s launch of similar hardware that year as evidence of copying.

The conflict boiled over in 2022. Samsara says it discovered the alleged unauthorized access in May of that year and sent a cease-and-desist letter to Motive’s board and CEO in June demanding it stop.

When the activity continued, Samsara alleges, Motive pressed ahead with independent benchmark studies — one from Strategy Analytics in 2022 and another from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute in 2023 — that it used to market its AI dashcam as up to four times more effective than Samsara’s. Samsara later called those studies misleading, claiming test units had safety features disabled.

Samsara opened the courtroom phase on Jan. 24, 2024, filing a federal lawsuit in Delaware (later moved to Northern California) accusing Motive of infringing three patents on gateways, machine vision and safety scoring, plus false advertising tied to the benchmark studies, breach of contract and unfair competition. Two weeks later Samsara asked the U.S. International Trade Commission to ban imports of Motive’s AI hardware over the same patents.

Motive fired back Feb. 15, 2024, with its own Northern California suit alleging Samsara infringed Motive’s AI patents and had been the original copycat since 2016. According to Motive’s S-1 filing, it also moved non-patent claims into confidential JAMS arbitration under Samsara’s terms-of-service clause.

The fight widened in late 2024. Samsara filed a California state trade secrets suit in October alleging years of employee poaching and misappropriation, and launched a second ITC trade secrets complaint in November. Federal and state courts stayed those cases in early 2025 pending the arbitration and ITC probe.

Fast forward to the past few weeks. The two biggest fronts reached resolution in February 2026.

The ITC fully cleared Motive, ruling no patent infringement, invalidating most of Samsara’s claims and finding Samsara failed the domestic industry requirement — ending any import-ban threat.

The same month the JAMS arbitrator issued a confidential decision on the false-advertising and platform-access claims, ruling in favor of Samsara and awarding them $30.3 million.

As of March 2026 the remaining patent pieces and trade secrets case sit in stayed proceedings with no trial dates set.

While some lawsuits are settled, others remain

But the legal dust is far from settled. This was just one front in a sprawling legal battle that now spans federal courts in Delaware and California, a state trade secrets case, and a separate ITC complaint — with allegations flying both ways over copying, fake accounts, employee poaching and anticompetitive tactics dating back nearly a decade.

The Delaware patent case and California trade secrets claims remain active. Until a settlement or final verdicts drop, expect more volleys in what has become one of trucking tech’s most bitter rivalries.