Lucid Motors is liable to dropping the trademark for the title of its Gravity SUV, simply months earlier than the corporate is meant to start out manufacturing.
Google Ventures-backed EV charging firm Gravity Inc. filed a “petition for cancellation” with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Workplace’s Trademark Trial and Attraction Board (TTAB) in December asking for Lucid’s Gravity trademark to be revoked. The startup claims within the petition that Lucid’s use of the Gravity title may confuse shoppers, since Gravity Inc. makes use of it for EV charging and has used it previously to function a fleet of EV taxis.
The problem comes at a time when Lucid is struggling to drum up clients, placing elevated strain on the Gravity SUV to succeed when it rolls off the road on the finish of this 12 months. The corporate misplaced $2.8 billion in 2023 and is just projecting to make round 9,000 vehicles in 2024 after as soon as predicting it will make 10 instances that.
Lucid has disputed the petition, however just lately warned traders in its annual submitting with the Securities and Change Fee that “[s]uch oppositions and challenges will be costly and should adversely have an effect on our means to keep up the goodwill gained in reference to a selected trademark.” A spokesperson for Lucid declined to remark past what’s within the filings with the TTAB.
“We really feel very, very assured about it,” Moshe Cohen, Gravity Inc.’s CEO, mentioned of the petition in an interview with TechCrunch.
Gravity Inc. has spent the previous couple of years engaged on designing and constructing superior fast-charging stations for electrical automobiles, and launched its first flagship location in New York Metropolis final week. It additionally started working a fleet of electrical taxis within the metropolis in late 2021 as a part of Taxi and a Limousine Fee (TLC) pilot program, utilizing a Mustang Mach-E and Tesla Mannequin Y SUV.
The startup acquired its trademark for the usage of the phrase Gravity in 2017, in relation to “transportation providers, specifically, employed automotive transport; passenger transport; taxi and limousine transport” and “pc software program and downloadable software program within the nature of a cellular software for coordinating transportation providers, specifically, software program for the automated scheduling and dispatch of motorized automobiles.”
The TLC pilot program led to 2023, although. A TLC spokesperson advised TechCrunch that one in all Gravity’s taxis remains to be lively in its system.
Lucid, in its reply to the petition filed final week, says that Gravity doesn’t at the moment function an EV fleet and argues that customers wouldn’t be confused by the 2 completely different makes use of of the Gravity title.
“[T]he providing on the market of electrically powered vehicles is completely distinct from [Gravity Inc.’s] alleged provision of hired-car transport, passenger transport, and taxi and limousine
transport providers, and associated transportation choices, to such a level that customers are usually not more likely to consider that [Gravity Inc.’s] and [Lucid’s] items and/or providers are related,” Lucid says in its response. “Furthermore, upon info and perception, [Gravity Inc.] ceased use of the GRAVITY mark for transportation and transportation-related providers earlier than the submitting of this petition.”
To that finish, Lucid additionally filed a counterclaim with the aim of making an attempt to pressure Gravity Inc. to surrender its trademark as a result of it deserted the fleet enterprise. “[Lucid] believes that it’s being and can proceed to be broken by [Gravity Inc.’s] registration,” the corporate writes.
