Tesla sued Cap-XX of Australia, alleging that it infringed the patent of automobile supercapacitor

CTOnews.com, July 18 (Reuters)-Tesla sued Australian company Cap-XX in federal court in Texas on Friday, local time, claiming that its supercapacitor used to store energy in electric vehicle batteries infringed two US patents owned by Tesla's subsidiary.

Elon Musk, Tesla's chief executive, promised in 2014 that he would not "file a patent lawsuit against anyone who wants to use our technology in good faith". Tesla recently said that the legal action is in response to the patent infringement lawsuit originally filed by Cap-XX against Tesla subsidiary Maxwell Technologies in 2019.

"Maxwell has a history of innovation and has its own patent, which has now been transferred to Tesla, so Tesla filed a lawsuit against Cap-XX to protect its intellectual property rights," the lawsuit said.

Representatives of Tesla and Cap-XX did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

As previously reported by CTOnews.com, Tesla bought Maxwell in 2019 for $235 million (currently about 1.685 billion yuan). Like Cap-XX, Maxwell produces capacitors for electric vehicles to improve its energy storage capacity. The patents Cap-XX allegedly infringed involved electrodes used in supercapacitors, which Tesla called "the main source of the equipment's power capacity."

Tesla said that the electrodes used in Cap-XX supercapacitors work on the same principle as Maxwell's patented technology. It asked the court to compensate for an unknown amount of money loss.

Cap-XX 's ongoing lawsuit in Delaware federal court accuses Maxwell of infringing its own supercapacitor patent.