The automotive industry is poised for yet another year of significant transformation in 2025, driven by rapid technological advancements, evolving government regulations, and shifting consumer demands. The electric vehicle (EV) market continues to expand, with new players entering the space and legacy automakers ramping up their electrification efforts. This dynamic environment is fueling an increase in legal challenges, including patent disputes, trade secret misappropriation cases, and cybersecurity conflicts as vehicles become more connected and autonomous.
An Automotive Expert’s Insight
To gain a deeper understanding of the conflicts and legal challenges shaping the 2025 landscape and beyond, we asked WIT Panel Member and automotive industry expert, Julie Wurmlinger, for her thoughts on the industry’s legal landscape. Ms. Wurmlinger has more than 30 years of industry experience and actively consults clients on electronics, IT, automotive engineering, and more.
Here’s what she has to say about the evolving automotive market in 2025, the legal hurdles ahead, and what companies should prepare for in the coming year.
WIT: Last year, you mentioned increasing legal challenges in the EV market, especially with patents and trade secrets. Considering 2025’s automotive landscape, have those issues grown, or have new legal concerns taken center stage?
Wurmlinger: Over the past year, legal challenges in the EV landscape have evolved in an interesting way. One way to understand the evolution is to examine the trend in patent publications over the past few years. EV technology patent publication trends have decreased slightly, while Electrified Roadway patent publication trends have increased dramatically over the same period. One of the reasons for this shift in patent publication trends is the need to improve infrastructure to not only satisfy existing customer demands, but to support growth in demand and growth in customer expectations.
As a result of this shift toward electrified roadway patent publications, I expect an increasing number of legal challenges in the areas of charging technologies, (wireless, ultra-fast, and smart grids), as well as electric vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology.
A pivotal case, ChargePoint v. SemaConnect (2017), reshaped competition in EV charging. ChargePoint sued for patent infringement regarding remotely-controlled networked charging stations, but courts dismissed the case, ruling the patents covered abstract ideas. The U.S. Supreme Court’s denial of certiorari (2020) effectively opened the market for all EV charging companies, fostering competition in smart charging infrastructure.
WIT: The expansion of AI in-vehicle technology is driving innovation but also creating complex legal challenges related to liability, data security, and regulation. How have legal and regulatory frameworks evolved to address safety and liability concerns in self-driving and assisted-driving systems?
Wurmlinger: A key development is a new U.S. rule from the Department of Commerce, as of January 2025, which prohibits the sale of Automated Driving Systems (ADS) and Vehicle Connectivity Systems (VCS) linked to China or Russia, citing national security concerns, due to the inherent gathering and capturing of user data for ADS and VCS connected automotive technologies. The rule covers connected vehicle technology hardware and software, with prohibitions on software likely to take effect sooner than hardware. The timeframe for full implementation is expected between 2027 and 2030.
At the state level, twenty-nine states—Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, New York, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin —and Washington D.C. have enacted legislation related to autonomous vehicles, and governors in eleven states have issued autonomous vehicle executive orders.
Internationally, Germany leads EU regulations on Level 3 and 4 autonomy, while the UK’s Automated Vehicles Act 2024 sets legal frameworks for safety, liability, and consumer protection. China now requires the submission of ADS, VCS, and over-the-air (OTA) technical data by June 1, 2025, for market access.
WIT: In our previous conversations, you highlighted partnerships between automakers and tech companies as a key trend. Have companies found better ways to handle intellectual property disputes, or are conflicts becoming more common?
Wurmlinger: The traditional patterns suggested that startups have more aggressively pursued litigation as they felt the need to maintain their competitive edge, while larger, more mature companies, including OEMs, have leveraged their brand identity and strategic investment portfolio toward partnerships and licensing agreements.
Tesla, however, has become an interesting case study. Since 2014, Tesla has taken the approach to promote EV adoption by allowing others to use its patents in an open-patent approach; however, more recent legal actions by Tesla point to a more aggressive protection of its IP, perhaps in response to a more competitive environment. A recent pivotal case in this arena (Tesla v Rivian & former Tesla employees) began in mid-2020, and was settled in December of 2024, shortly after a trial date was set for March 2025. This case involved claims by Tesla alleging that Rivian recruited and employed (former) Tesla employees, encouraging them to share IP involving Tesla’s battery and manufacturing technology. Had this case gone to trial, it would have been Tesla’s first case of enforcement at trial of a trade secret misappropriation claim against a competitor.
Tesla has also pursued two other significant IP cases: one against Matthews International Corp. over battery manufacturing trade secrets (which Matthews won in arbitration), and another ongoing lawsuit against former employees accused of using Tesla’s proprietary technology to establish Chinese startup Xpeng.
An interesting development, which warrants further study, is the application of blockchain technology to track patents, and other traceable IP. This could drastically reduce the need for, or duration of, litigation in the IP arena, since in all scenarios above, companies are increasingly forced to strike a delicate balance between partnerships, technology leadership, and industry growth while maintaining a competitive advantage.
WIT: Looking ahead, what’s the biggest legal challenge automakers should prepare for in 2025? Are there any upcoming regulations or industry shifts that could have a major impact?
Wurmlinger: Given the ever-increasing prevalence of electrified vehicles in the market, the notion of “range anxiety” has the potential of becoming a litigious issue for automakers. Consumers are still concerned with the lack of infrastructure to support long trips and are also concerned about safety issues resulting from being stranded due to lack of charge. Automakers will need to ensure that range is guaranteed as advertised – not just by virtue of their technology, but through close cooperation with the Department of Transportation to increase and improve charging infrastructure. Much of this “range anxiety” has increased and re-invigorated the need to maintain hybrid vehicles in OEM portfolios, and this portfolio shift has been supported by the recent cancellation of the Biden Administration Electric Vehicle Executive Order, which required 50% of vehicles sold in the US by 2030 to be electric vehicles.
In addition, a continuing and growing concern involves data security, with the increased prevalence of connected vehicles. The State of Texas has sued General Motors, LLC, and Onstar, LLC, alleging that they unlawfully collected and sold the private driving data of 1.5 million people in Texas to third parties. The plaintiffs allege that their information was used to negatively influence insurance rates, by virtue of a “scored” driving behavior. Without disclosure from automakers, consumers and some legislators are raising concerns about Fourth Amendment violations of consumers. Additional automakers are currently under investigation by the State of Texas for similar concerns.
How WIT’s Experts Can Help Mitigate Risk
Want to learn more about what’s to come in the automotive industry and electric vehicles market in 2025? Reach out to learn more about our electric vehicles expert team, created to address what we expect to be the key areas of litigation in the move to electric and autonomous vehicles.