Making our roads safer. Defending fair competition.
Motive has filed a lawsuit against Samsara for patent infringement, theft of intellectual property and trade secrets, false and deceptive advertising, and anticompetitive behavior. For years, Samsara has engaged in unlawful and deceptive business practices to copy Motive’s products and technology and to steal its intellectual property. Despite its efforts, Samsara has failed to develop competitive AI technology and is losing large enterprise customers to Motive as a result.
Read Motive's lawsuit against SamsaraSamsara's leadership team has used Motive’s product for years to copy its functionality.
Since 2016, Samsara's leadership, including its Chief Product Officer Kiren Sekar and key product and design executives, have used Motive's product to copy critical features and AI capabilities that Motive spent years and millions of dollars developing. Samsara employees created over 30 fake Motive accounts, often using personal emails and fictitious company names, and included senior Samsara executives who were then named as inventors on Samsara patents.
Kiren Sekar
Chief Product Officer
Rushil Goel
Vice President Product
Nirav Patel
Vice President R&D Operations
Sr Director, Product Management
Sr Director, Product Management
Sr Director, Engineering
Director, Product Management
Director, Product Management
Principal Product Designer
Senior Counsel
Regional Sales Manager, Enterprise Public Sector
Sales Senior Manager
Customer Experience Manager
Product Manager
Product Manager
Product Manager
Product Manager
Product Manager
Product Manager
Product Design Manager
Product Design Manager
Marketing Operations Manager
Engineering Manager
Growth & Business Operations Lead
Sr Product Designer
Sr Product Designer
Business Development
Account Executive
Account Executive
Account Executive
Product Designer
Product Designer
Member of Technical Staff
Tech Support
Samsara copied Motive product features and has infringed Motive patents.
Motive was founded in 2013, two years before Samsara. After seeing our rapid growth in 2016 with the release of our ELD, Samsara employees closely studied our product to understand how it worked and directly copied multiple features. Samsara is infringing Motive's patent rights and we are pursuing legal action to protect Motive's patent rights core to our AI Dashcam.
ELD & Driver App
Look and feel is almost the exact same. The main difference is that the duty status selection is up top vs. below, and even the dark mode button is located in the exact same location (bottom right corner)
Motive launched in 2015
Samsara launched in 2016
U.S. Patent No. 11,875,580
They copied our dashboard overview to highlight compliance with dials and percentages for HOS Violations and Unidentified Driving. As you can tell from the screenshots, they are quite similar.
U.S. Patent No. 11,875,580
Camera Initialization for Lane Detection and Distance Estimation Using Single-View Geometry and Deep Learning
Compliance Dashboard
They copied our dashboard overview to highlight compliance with dials and percentages for HOS Violations and Unidentified Driving. As you can tell from the screenshots, they are quite similar.
Motive launched in 2017
Samsara launched in 2020
Split Sleeper Support
They placed it in the exact same place and used the exact same component.
Motive launched in 2020
Samsara launched in 2021
Driver App Lock
We were the first in the industry to offer this, and they added the exact same feature with a 4 digit access code to lock down inspection mode for drivers.
Motive launched in 2017
Samsara launched in 2021
Document Scanning
We were one of the first in the industry to introduce document scanning. They added the same functionality later on.
Motive launched in 2019
Samsara launched in 2022
Driver Safety Score
We were the first in the industry to give drivers the ability to review their own video events, which Samsara later copied and added to their platform.
Motive launched in 2019
Samsara launched in 2020
Samsara stole valuable trade secrets by poaching Motive employees.
In 2019, Motive spent considerable time and resources developing its AI Dashcam, using an Ambarella AI chip in collaboration with QSMC, a leading electronics manufacturer. Starting in December 2019, Samsara hired away Motive’s VP of Hardware Engineering and other Motive engineering leaders to steal trade secrets and intellectual property, particularly related to Motive’s AI Dashcam. Samsara is in the process of launching its new AI Dash Cam, manufactured by QSMC, using an Ambarella chip — directly copying Motive’s hardware design and supplier relationship.
Samsara continues to make false claims about its AI, harming customers and making roads less safe.
Samsara introduced its AI Dash Cam in February 2019, claiming it used AI to detect tailgating, cell phone use, and driver distraction to "prevent accidents before they happen.” Third-party testing by Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, Strategy Analytics and Motive’s own testing revealed that Samsara’s AI does not work as advertised. This is the same AI dash cam Samsara sells today; nonetheless, Samsara sales reps use these false claims to unjustly win new customers.
Motive chose a different path because we actually wanted to make roads safer. In 2017, Motive acquired Ingrain, an AI startup that was developing cutting-edge computer vision technology, and tasked them with building AI to detect unsafe driving behavior. It took 25 engineers, 35 data annotators, and almost three years to build our first AI models to accurately detect cell phone use and tailgating. Only once we believed our AI models could accurately detect unsafe driving behavior did we release our AI Dashcam in 2021, in stark contrast to Samsara’s false promises.
Motive invited Samsara to participate in third‑party benchmarking tests.
They declined.
Motive commissioned third-party studies from Virginia Tech Transportation Institute and Strategy Analytics so customers could easily compare AI performance across competing dash cam products. Samsara’s AI Dash Cam performed poorly, detecting only 15% of unsafe events in the independent study conducted by Strategy Analytics and successfully alerted drivers to unsafe driving behavior 21% of the time in the controlled test track study conducted by VTTI.
Motive fundamentally believes product benchmarking is good for customers. The FTC encourages truthful and non-deceptive product comparisons because they provide important information to buyers to assist them in making rational purchase decisions. Motive stands behind the principle that AI products should be benchmarked to protect their users, especially when they promise to improve driver safety and save lives.
“Motive has spent years developing AI to prevent accidents and make our roads safer. Samsara hasn’t been able to compete on the AI front, and is losing large enterprise customers to Motive as a result. Instead of building a better product, Samsara has resorted to unlawful and anticompetitive business practices in an attempt to close the gap. We challenge Samsara to resolve this on the road rather than in a courtroom.”
Motive innovates. Samsara follows.
June 2013
Motive (formerly KeepTruckin) founded with the mission to improve the safety and efficiency of the US transportation industry.
December 2013
Motive pioneers the first Android and iPhone based fleet management and electronic logging platform.
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January 2015
Motive designs its first Vehicle Gateway with USB interface to support future dash cam.
August 2015
Motive’s first Vehicle Gateway (LBB1) is manufactured.
October 2015
Motive has 150,000 drivers and 5,000 fleets on the platform and officially releases the Vehicle Gateway device.
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April 2016
Samsara website advertises their first Vehicle Gateway (VG32).
April 2016
Samsara product, engineering, and design leaders create Motive accounts using fictitious company names to copy Motive’s features.
April 2017
Motive acquires Ingrain to develop AI models for unsafe driving behaviors including cell phone use and tailgating.
March 2018
Samsara product leaders receive shipment of Motive’s Vehicle Gateway to a fake customer account.
February 2019
Samsara releases its AI Dashcam and makes false claims about the product’s ability to detect unsafe driving behaviors.
Read article
December 2019
Samsara poaches Motive’s VP of Hardware Engineering to steal trade secrets and IP related to Motive’s AI Dashcam and Ambarella chip.
August 2021
Motive officially releases its AI Dashcam after years of R&D. Motive’s AI Dashcam is the first and only on the market based on the Ambarella AI chip manufactured by QSMC.
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April 2022
Strategy Analytics report is released showing Motive detects 86% of unsafe behavior vs. 15% for Samsara.
Read article
June 2022
Samsara begins its campaign to suppress the results of the Strategy Analytics study.
January 2023
Motive commissions a third party study from Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI).
July 2023
VTTI report is released showing Motive detects unsafe driving behavior 86% of the time vs. 21% for Samsara.
Read article
February 2024
Motive files lawsuit against Samsara for patent infringement and to put a stop to its anticompetitive business practices.
Read the lawsuit