Equipment Cat’s Big Fight With a Tiny Rival Over Driverless Machines David versus Goliath fight over autonomous construction machines. A five-year-old Pittsburgh start-up with 14 employees has become the target of the world’s largest construction equipment maker, in a patent fight that doubles as a test of how much protection a company can claim over the software running inside machines it has already sold. Caterpillar filed the suit on June 10 in a Delaware federal court against Bluelight Machines, accusing it of infringing five patents covering autonomous operation and compaction technology. The filing seeks a permanent injunction against Bluelight’s products, triple damages, legal costs and a jury trial. At issue are aftermarket kits that convert vibratory soil compactors and articulated dump trucks to driverless operation, priced between $50,000 and $60,000 and fitted in under two hours. Roughly 200 kits are currently running on active subscriptions, according to Bluelight chief executive Dick Zhang, with the company now reporting 1.4 billion square feet of autonomous compaction completed. Caterpillar’s complaint zeroes in on Bluelight’s origins. “Bluelight’s development of these kits was so intertwined with Caterpillar technology that they initially only worked on Caterpillar machines,” the lawsuit says. The manufacturer argues it is effectively subsidising its own displacement, noting it is “now competing for the same customers against the very technologies it invented and patented.” Five components are named as infringing, spanning GPS antennas and cabling, an auto-pilot C-set, a steering motor, and the tablet software running the system. Zhang does not dispute where Bluelight began, but tells a different story of how it got there. The company’s first conversion came after a customer handed over an old Caterpillar roller and asked him to make it drive itself. READ MORE: How Caterpillar Bulldozed Its Way Into The Tech World Having previously run a drone-surveying