IP Law Daily, TRADE SECRETS—Tex. App.: No interlocutory injunction for CreateAI in autonomous trucking trade secret dispute, (Sep 17, 2026)

By Sherri M. Schroeder, J.D.

The appeals court found that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in finding that CreateAI did not show a probable right of recovery or irreparable injury.

In a trade secret dispute between two technology startups in the autonomous trucking industry, Texas's Fifteenth Court of Appeals has upheld the trial court's decision denying a temporary injunction against Bot Auto TX Inc. CreateAI Holdings, Inc. (formerly known as TuSimple Holdings, Inc.) alleged that Bot Auto misappropriated CreateAI's trade secrets in order to develop its autonomous trucking technology and sought a pretrial temporary injunction to restrain Bot Auto from transferring or disseminating key components of the contested technology. After the trial court denied that motion, CreateAI filed an interlocutory appeal. The appeals court agreed with the trial court and found that CreateAI's sensor array was public and not a trade secret, that the decisional processes of each company's decision-making technology were markedly different, and that the claims of misappropriated safety technology failed "both by overbreadth and by the details in evidence." Furthermore, the appeals court found that CreateAI was unlikely to suffer imminent injury that could not be compensated by money damages because it no longer maintained its autonomous trucking operations in the U.S. (Createai Holdings, Inc. v. Bot Auto TX Inc., No. 15-25-00001-CV (Tex. App. Sep. 15, 2026)).

Background. CreateAI was founded in 2015 to focus on developing 18-wheelers capable of fully driverless "hub-to-hub" transport, which it successfully completed in two years. The company achieved a full "driver-out" hub-to-hub trip in late 2021. Less than a year later, CreateAI fired its co-founder and CEO. In 2023, that CEO started Bot Auto. Bot Auto accomplished a fully autonomous hub-to-hub trip in approximately 15 months.

CreateAI sued Bot Auto under the Texas Uniform Trade Secrets Act, claiming three misappropriations of its trade secrets: theft of its proprietary sensor suite, theft of aspects of its proprietary decision-making technology (specifically, the terms used to label data fed into this autonomous decision process), and misappropriation of its proprietary safety technology (specifically, a dual "nerve system" for auxiliary braking and the technical parameters of its steering system).

Sensor array. For this claim, the appeals court found that CreateAI's sensor array was public and therefore not a trade secret. The court also found that Bot Auto's sensor array was too distinct from CreateAI's to warrant a misappropriation claim. Like all other self-driving vehicles presently in existence, CreateAI's sensor array is housed on the outside of the vehicle in plain sight. Although the court noted that a layperson observing an 18-wheeler on the highway would likely be unable to identify the various sensors in its array, CreateAI had publicized the exact locations and varieties of its sensor in an investor presentation in 2022, "complete with color-coded highlighting and visualizations of how the sensors operate in tandem." The record evidence also showed that several aspects of Bot Auto's sensor array were markedly different from CreateAI's. Bot Auto used high-resolution lidar sensors that were unavailable during CreateAI's developmental stage. It positions its lidar sensors on the roof of its trucks, while CreateAI positions them at the height of the engine hood. Bot Auto's product also processes differently formatted data through a different type of neural network.

Decision-making technology. CreateAI accused Bot Auto of copying its labels and categories for organizing data to "teach" an autonomous vehicle how to drive safely. Here, the court found that the record evidence supported the trial court's rejection of that allegation. CreateAI offered only one concrete example of the alleged "semantic" misappropriation: Bot Austo classified possible scenarios as either "green cases" or "red cases." According to the court, those color-coded terms were developed by CreateAI. However, "[a]n identical color-coding scheme for the broadest level of data categorization is a far cry from the wholesale theft of an entire semantics regime that CreateAI alleges," according to the court. CreateAI's own exhibits demonstrated a far more comprehensive and detailed semantic scheme. Additionally, this semantic regime and "data annotation conventions" were of no use to Bot Auto because CreateAI's decision-making technology is based on "convolutional neural networks" while Bot Auto uses a "transformer neural network" that relies on different mathematics and requires far less human annotation. Bot Auto's sensors are also configured differently, which results in different data formats, and it was not clear to the court that Bot Auto could derive any benefit from CreateAI's data annotation techniques.

Safety technology. CreateAI also alleged that Bot Auto misappropriated its dual-CAN bus system to create a redundant braking method and key technical parameters of its steering system. The court found that the trial court had not abused its discretion by deciding otherwise. For the court, the fact that both companies employed the same method to achieve redundancy in the braking system did not inherently mean that Bot Auto misappropriated trade secrets. CreateAI publicized its use of a CAN system in a 2022 investor presentation. Moreover, Bot Auto used a different brand of braking components with different interfacing protocols and failure modes. As to the steering system, the court noted that the steering requirements of the companies were not identical, with differences in maximum steering torque, position error range, and response latency time.

Irreparable injury. Finally, it did not appear to the court that CreateAI would suffer any probable, imminent, and irreparable injury that warranted a temporary injunction in the absence of a temporary injunction. First, CreateAI appeared to have removed itself from the autonomous trucking industry by transforming into an AI-powered entertainment company making animated films and video games. It retained only 10 employees in the U.S. and limited its efforts to licensing its technologies to other active companies. Therefore, it was not clear that CreateAI would suffer any injury from Bot Auto's autonomous trucking "endeavors." Second, the proper remedy if any misappropriation occurred is compensatory damages, not injunctive relief, per the court. Lost licensing royalties are an injury that can be calculated and compensated with damages, per the court. Therefore, the court affirmed the denial of a preliminary injunction.

The Case is No. 15-25-00001-CV.

Judge: Brister, S.

Attorneys: Timothy J. McCarthy (McCarthy Law, PLLC) for CreateAI Holdings, Inc. f/k/a Tusimple Holdings, Inc. Allison Allman (Jackson Walker LLP) for Bot Auto TX Inc.

Companies: CreateAI Holdings, Inc. f/k/a Tusimple Holdings, Inc.; Bot Auto TX Inc.

Cases: TradeSecrets TexasNews GCNNews