Cybercab

It will soon be a year since Tesla’s first autonomous taxis began to roll And to this day the creature still does not have an official name. AND not because Elon Musk hasn’t tried. First it ran into the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and now it has been a French sparkling water company. rookie mistake. Tesla may have the technology of the future rolling on the streets, but when it held the ‘We, Robot’ event in 2024 in which it presented the Cybercab, it forgot a small detail: it announced the name without having officially registered the brand. This is where Unibev comes into play, a French beverage company, which saw the perfect opportunity to troll the richest man in the world. The patent troll. What Unibev did is a clear case of patent thief (or troll, as they would say in ‘Silicon Valley’). Taking advantage of Tesla’s oversight, six days after the announcement, the company registered the name Cybercab and it doesn’t seem like it’s because they want to call their sparkling water that way, but rather to simply be annoying. The company already had a history of trolling Musk and in addition to Cybercab they also registered Cybertaxi, Robocab Systems, XCab, Cyber ​​Diner, Teslaquila, Teslaquila Hard Seltzer and With a Touch of Musk. Some horny ones. The answer. The USPTO suspended Tesla’s application because Unibev had beaten them to it, but Tesla did not sit idly by and filed a lawsuit of more than 150 pages in which they accuse Unibev of bad faith and having acted as a patent thief. Having registered before is not synonymous with victory, since simply proving that Unibev does not manufacture vehicles the authority should rule in favor of Tesla. In their application, Unibev said they could use the name for “a car, a ship or a plane.” It seems easy enough to dismantle, the problem is that the litigation could extend until 2027. If Unibev wins the dispute, Tesla could be forced to negotiate the use of the name outside the US and even have to use another name in certain markets. And ‘robotaxi’?. Tesla too tried to register the trademark ‘Robotaxi’but the USPTO told them that nanai. The reason had nothing to do with any patent thief, but because it is “used to describe similar products and services of other companies. (…) This expression appears to be generic in the context of the applicant’s products and/or services.” The USTPO comes to say that it is too standard a name, it would be like registering the ‘taxi’ trademark. There is still more. The organizational chaos does not end with taxis, the same thing also happened with its autonomous minibus, presented with great fanfare as “Robovan.” The problem is that Tesla announced it without first having verified that the brand was already registered by an Estonian delivery company. Tesla has had to look for less attractive alternatives such as “Robobus”, “Robus” or “Cyberbus”. About launching autonomous vehicles with super-advanced technology, well, that’s all the paperwork. Image | tesla In Xataka | Tesla robotaxis are autonomous, except when driven by a man from Texas