Ouster, a US-based lidar sensor supplier, has filed a lawsuit against its Chinese competitor Hesai Technology for patent infringement in the US District Court of Delaware and the US International Trade Commission (USITC). Ouster alleges that Hesai has illegally exported products that infringe on five of Ouster’s lidar patents and seeks an investigation by the USITC. This adds another obstacle for Hesai Technology, which withdrew its domestic IPO application and listed in the US after a series of twists and turns.

Hesai Technology, founded in 2014 and headquartered in Shanghai, is a lidar research and manufacturing company and one of the leading lidar companies for autonomous driving and advanced driver assistance systems. According to relevant data, 12 of the top 15 global autonomous driving companies use Hesai Technology’s lidar as their main radar.

Ouster, headquartered in California, is a publicly traded lidar company that builds high-resolution digital 3D lidar sensors for autonomous vehicles, robots, drones, mapping, defense and security systems. Ouster claims to have hundreds of granted and pending lidar patents and is one of the largest holders of lidar patent families in the industry.

In response to the lawsuit, Ouster said that the company’s CEO Angus Pacala, who is a co-inventor of these patents, was granted patent ownership from November 2021 to August 2022. Ouster co-founder and CEO Angus Pacala said, “The documents we submitted are just preliminary steps, requesting the International Trade Commission to consider our case. Ouster’s ultimate goal is to seek a ban on relevant infringing products in the United States.”

Based on this, Ouster hopes that the commission will issue a limited exclusion order and a cease and desist order against Hesai Technology to prevent the company from exporting “suspected infringing” lidar devices, components and products to the United States.

According to media reports, Hesai Technology said, “We believe that Ouster’s lawsuit is unreasonable and we will defend and protect our intellectual property rights according to law. We do not have more information to share at this time.”

Hesai Technology’s IPO journey has also been bumpy. It eventually chose to withdraw its domestic application and go public in the US.

Hesai Technology was established in Shanghai in 2014 and initially engaged in laser remote sensing business. In 2016, it switched to the lidar field. In 2017, it completed a RMB 110 million Series A financing. In 2018, Hesai Technology’s Pandar40 won Baidu and became one of the first-tier companies. In the same year, it completed a RMB 250 million Series B financing. In 2019, it was sued by Velodyne for patent infringement and settled for RMB 160 million. In the same year, it completed Series B+ and Pre-C rounds of financing, with undisclosed amounts. In 2020, it completed a $173 million Series C financing. In 2021, it launched AT128 and won an order from Ideal Auto. In February 2023, it went public in the US and became the “first share of China’s lidar”.

Before successfully going public on the US stock market, Hesai Technology had submitted an IPO application to the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s Sci-Tech Innovation Board and was approved, but withdrew its listing application after the first round of inquiries. Therefore, netizens speculated that the patent dispute with Velodyne might also be one of the reasons for its withdrawal of its listing application.

Previously, Baidu wanted to showcase its driverless car at the Wuzhen World Internet Conference. Velodyne’s 128-line lidar VLS-128 frequently malfunctioned.