In an interlocutory appeal from the Business Court, the 15th Court of Appeals has affirmed the trial court’s denial of a temporary injunction in a misappropriation of trade secrets dispute between two developers of autonomous trucking technology.
CreateAI Holdings, Inc. f/k/a Tusimple Holdings, Inc. v. Bot Auto TX Inc. (No. 15-25-00001-CV; September 15, 2026) arose from a dispute between two startup autonomous vehicle companies. Founded in 2015, CreateAI aimed to develop an autonomous 18-wheeler capable of driverless “hub-to-hub” transport. By 2021, it successfully achieved a full “driver-out- hub-to-hub trip. Shortly thereafter, the company fired its co-founder and CEO, Dr. Hou. Hou remained on the board of directors for several months, but severed ties in March 2023 and in the summer founded a competitor company called Bot Auto. It took 15 months for Bot Auto to accomplish a fully-autonomous hub-to-hub trip. About the same time, CreateAI sought to get out of the autonomous trucking business but couldn’t find a buyer for it. As a result, it closed down US operations and redirected its business to developing AI-powered digital entertainment for Asian markets.
At the same time, CreateAI sued Bot Auto under the Texas Uniform Trade Secrets Act (TUTSA), alleging misappropriation of proprietary autonomous vehicle technology and seeking damages, fees, costs, and injunctive relief. The parties quickly agreed to a TRO designed to maintain the status quo until the TI hearing. The trial court held the hearing in November 2024 and subsequently denied the TI and dissolved the TRO. CreateAI sought interlocutory relief.
In an opinion by Chief Justice Brister, the court of appeals affirmed. CreateAI alleged that Bot Auto stole its proprietary “sensor suite,” its proprietary decision-making technology, and its proprietary safety technology. CreateAI further alleged that Bot Auto used its trade secrets, not that it simply possessed them. In general, the court held that “some evidence reasonably supports the trial court’s decision not to impose a temporary injunction.” The trial court found that CreatAI’s sensor array was public and thus not a trade secret and that Bot Auto’s sensor array was too distinct to warrant a misappropriation claim. Similarly, the parties’ decision processes were “so markedly different as to eschew comparison.” As to the misappropriation of the safety technology, the trial court concluded that CreateAI’s claim was overbroad and non-specific.
Turning to the sensor array, the court pointed out that CreatAI’s sensor array, like that of any other autonomous vehicle, is in plain sight and “generally not secret.” Still, “a layperson observing an autonomous 18-wheeler on a public highway would likely be unable to identify the various sensors in its array.” CreateAI, however, “publicized the exact locations and varieties of its sensors in an investor presentation in 2022,” as well as how they work. Bot Auto, on the other hand, used “high resolution lidar sensors” not available to CreateAI and positioned its sensors in a different location on the vehicle, producing a different line of sight for object detection. Bot Auto also used different makes and models of sensors that CreateAI did, resulting in differences in processing data. Even had Bot Auto mounted its sensor array in the same location as CreateAI did and that location was a protectable trade secret, there was no misappropriation.
The same was true of the decision-making technology. CreateAI offered only “one concrete example of possible semantic misappropriation: Bot Auto classifies possible scenarios as either ‘green cases’ (in which the vehicle could perform a liability-free maneuver based on generally applicable rules) or ‘red cases’ (in which there are no liability-free options and the vehicle’s maneuvers must be dictated by situation-specific rules). Those color-coded terms were developed by Create AI.” But there was more to the semantic regime than the green-red color coding, and “CreateAI’s own CEO refused to assert that the red/green dichotomy is itself a trade secret, merely alleging that color scheme is an ‘indication of the series of logical flow[s] of how to solve or think about’ the problems inherent to self-driving vehicles.” Additionally, the record showed that Bot Auto had no use for CreateAI’s semantics regime and data annotation conventions. Bot Auto trained its neural network using an entirely different methodology than CreateAI employed. Based on the record, “the trial court had discretion to rely on Dr. Hou’s testimony that ‘anything pertaining to convolutional neural network is intrinsically incompatible to the technology that we [Bot Auto] use today for transfer neural networks.”
CreateAI’s last opportunity lay with its allegation that Bot Auto misappropriated two elements of its safety technology. The first, a “dual-CAN bus system to create a redundant braking method,” didn’t constitute a trade secret. Though both parties used the same method to achieve redundancy, that “[did] not inherently mean that Bot Auto misappropriated trade secrets.” After all, CreateAI publicized its system in the 2022 investor presentation. Bot Auto also used a different brand of breaking components with different interfacing protocols and failure modes. Similarly, the second element, the steering systems, were not identical, producing distinctions in maximum steering torque, steering position error, and response latency. No misappropriation here.
Even if there had been misappropriation, however, CreateAI failed to show that it would suffer any probable, imminent, and irreparable injury absent a TI. CreateAI moved on from autonomous trucking years ago, preferring to produce video games. But if it had retained some interest in autonomous trucking, CreateAI could be adequately compensated in quantifiable damages. That was the proper remedy, not injunctive relief. Still, as the court pointed out, although the preliminary record didn’t support injunctive relief, the case might still proceed with the opportunity for further development of the evidence.
