Caterpillar has filed a federal lawsuit alleging patent infringement against a company that sells aftermarket kits to convert construction equipment to autonomous operation.
The lawsuit accuses Bluelight Machines of violating five Caterpillar Paving patents for compaction and autonomous operation. Filed June 10 in U.S. District Court in Delaware, the suit seeks a permanent halt to the products’ sales, triple financial damages, legal costs and a jury trial.
Bluelight was formed in 2023 in Pittsburgh. Its aftermarket autonomy kits are available for ride-on vibratory soil compactors and articulated dump trucks. Bluelight CEO Dick Zhang says about 200 of the kits have been installed for active subscriptions.
The kits can convert machinery to unmanned operation for about $50,000 to $60,000 in less than 2 hours, Zhang says. One person can monitor and manage multiple machines from a single mobile device.
He says the lawsuit is baseless, as Bluelight’s kits were developed from free, open-source software that has been around for 20 years.
“We think it's a no-merits set of allegations,” he says. “We're very eager to provide the necessary documentation to go through the process to get to some kind of ruling with a jury or a judge.”
Powered byCaterpillar, however, alleges Bluelight has stolen its patented autonomous technology for its Roller Kit and Truck Kit.
“Bluelight’s development of these kits was so intertwined with Caterpillar technology that they initially only worked on Caterpillar machines,” the lawsuit says. “Even today, Bluelight’s kits work on a limited number of non-Caterpillar machines but work with over 32 machines manufactured by Caterpillar or its affiliates.”
The company alleges it is “now competing for the same customers against the very technologies it invented and patented.”
The lawsuit lists the following Bluelight components as violating five of Caterpillar’s patents issued between 2020 and 2023: two GPS antennas, a GPS cable, an auto-pilot C-set, steering motor, tablet and associated software applications and firmware.
An image included in Caterpillar's lawsuit against Bluelight of an autonomy kit it says infringes on its patents.Caterpillar vs. Bluelight lawsuit
Before converting the customer’s CS54B into an autonomous roller, Zhang owned a drone construction-site surveying company for about 10 years, which he sold.
“We took literally free, open-source drone technologies that have been around for almost 20 years,” he says. “We combined that with a steering wheel motor thing … that are used on farm tractors. Farm tractors have been doing the drive-by-itself thing since the early 2000s.
“So we took these two free, open-source things, and we plugged them into a roller, and that was how Bluelight was born.”
The company holds no patents.
“Software is not very patentable because we can issue a software update, and overnight everybody can have new or different stuff,” he says. “… It’s the pace of innovation.”
The company has also worked with Cat and Sitech dealers in deploying the aftermarket technology. For the first year and a half, he says, corporate Caterpillar showed no interest from Bluelight in the kits.
“They didn't really care,” he says. “We got brushed aside.”
He says the company has been open about its technology and is working with manufacturers Volvo CE, Dynapac and Hamm and seeking others. About one-third of the kits are on articulated dump trucks with the rest on soil compactors. Bluelight now reports 1.4 billion square feet of autonomous compaction.
According to Zhang, sales began to accelerate in the past year and a half, which is when he “started to feel the hostility” from Caterpillar.
After the lawsuit was filed June 10, he has been reaching out to all Bluelight customers. Zhang has posted an open letter concerning the lawsuit to Bluelight’s website.
“Not a single customer has changed their course of business with us,” he says. “Actually, the overwhelming majority of customers are picking up their business with us, and I think it is a true statement to say business has been better now in the last two months than the 12 months before.”
“They're very fired up about this David-Goliath thing,” he adds. “It's like 14 of us versus, I think, 130,000,” he says referring to each company’s number of employees.
He also views the lawsuit from the largest construction equipment manufacturer in the world as somewhat of a validation of the products.
“Our pace of iteration is what customers are drawn to,” he says. “… It's making the OEMs very uncomfortable.”
