Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) filed a lawsuit against Cap-XX (LON:CAPX), an Australian company, in a federal court in Texas Friday. According to Tesla, CAP-XX's supercapacitors, which are utilized to store energy in electric-vehicle batteries, violate two U.S. patents owned by a Tesla subsidiary.
CEO Elon Musk pledged in 2014 not to "initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology." However, the electric automaker says the legal action comes in response to a lawsuit that Cap-XX originally filed against Tesla subsidiary Maxwell Technologies in 2019 for patent infringement.
"Maxwell has a history of innovation that has resulted in its own patents, now assigned to Tesla, and thus Tesla brings this suit against Cap-XX to protect its intellectual property rights," the lawsuit said
Cap-XX's ongoing lawsuit in Delaware federal court accuses Maxwell of infringing its own supercapacitor patents.
Shares of TSLA are up 2.86% in afternoon trading on Monday.