A federal appeals court has handed Tesla another courtroom loss, this time over a patent covering automated electric vehicle charging systems. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a split decision on February 26, affirming that Tesla failed to invalidate a patent held by Charge Fusion Technologies, LLC. The full ruling, reported by IPWatchdog, turned on a narrow question of claim construction that divided the three-judge panel.

The Fact: The CAFC affirmed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s ruling that Tesla did not prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Charge Fusion’s U.S. Patent No. 10,998,753 is unpatentable.
The Delta: The case turned on a narrow but important distinction: whether “charging control” means a system that operates automatically, or one where a user manually plugs in at each stop. The majority said automatic. The dissent disagreed — and that disagreement matters for what comes next.
The Buyer Impact: This ruling has no immediate effect on Tesla owners or Supercharger access, but it confirms a valid patent covering automated, schedule-driven EV charging — technology that sits at the core of how modern EVs and charging platforms operate.

The Patent Tesla Could Not Kill

Charge Fusion Technologies owns U.S. Patent No. 10,998,753, titled “Systems and Methods for Charging Electric Vehicles.” The patent covers systems that automatically execute a charging schedule — meaning the charging process runs without a user manually starting and stopping each session. Tesla filed an inter partes review (IPR) challenge in 2022, asking the PTAB to invalidate the patent claims entirely. The PTAB first instituted the IPR — a threshold step where it agreed the challenge was worth reviewing — then issued a Final Written Decision finding the claims valid. Tesla appealed that Final Written Decision to the CAFC.

The “Kato” Argument and Why It Failed

Tesla’s appeal rested on a prior art reference known as “Kato” — U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0243331 — a system that determines charging locations for an electric vehicle along a planned route. Tesla argued that Kato already disclosed the “Charging Control Limitation” in Charge Fusion’s patent, which would have made the patent claims unpatentable as not novel.

The argument had a specific flaw. Tesla’s reading of Kato required a user to manually plug in at each charging location along a route. The PTAB found that the Charging Control Limitation, by its plain and ordinary meaning, “excludes the user manually starting and stopping the charging.” The claim requires the system to operate automatically — not a human following a printed schedule and plugging in by hand.

The CAFC majority, written by Judge Chen and joined by Judge Reyna, agreed and affirmed on that single ground. The court pointed to language in Charge Fusion’s specification describing “intelligent” charging, where the system itself executes instructions and interacts with a wireless charging location: “Such intelligent charging management goes beyond mere manual plug-in and instead requires the system to execute instructions that control the charging process.”

Because the majority resolved the case on the Charging Control Limitation, it did not address Tesla’s second argument about the Charging Schedule Limitation. That second argument was never adjudicated. In a different procedural context — a future IPR or district court litigation — it could theoretically be raised again, though the bar for doing so after a CAFC affirmance is high.

Judge Dyk’s Dissent Keeps the Door Open

Judge Dyk filed a dissenting opinion, arguing the majority got the claim construction wrong. In his reading, “the plain language of the Charging Control limitation does not require intelligent charging,” and Kato should have been found to disclose it. That’s a meaningful disagreement. When a CAFC judge dissents on claim construction, it signals the losing party has a plausible argument for en banc review or a petition to the Supreme Court — though neither outcome is common.

Tesla has not publicly commented on whether it will pursue further review.

Tesla’s Broader Legal Picture

This loss adds to a string of legal setbacks Tesla has faced across different venues. A Florida jury awarded $243 million against Tesla in a fatal 2019 Autopilot crash — a verdict Tesla is expected to contest through post-trial motions or appeal, meaning the final payout could differ significantly from the jury’s number. A California class-action accused Tesla of manipulating odometers to avoid warranty repairs. Tesla has also been the plaintiff in high-stakes IP fights, including a case where it sued a former supplier for alleged battery trade secret theft valued at over $1 billion.

On the corporate governance side, Tesla moved to set a 3% ownership threshold to block derivative lawsuits, and fought a years-long battle over direct sales bans in Louisiana. The Charge Fusion case is a different category — an IP challenge Tesla initiated and lost — but it fits the same pattern of the company fighting on multiple legal fronts simultaneously.

Meanwhile, Tesla’s physical charging infrastructure continues to expand. The company recently opened the world’s largest Supercharger in Lost Hills, California, with 164 solar-powered stalls. That operational scale doesn’t change the patent picture, but it shows where Tesla’s real infrastructure advantage sits — in hardware deployment, not software IP.

EVXL’s Take

The interesting thing about this case isn’t that Tesla lost. It’s what the patent covers. Automated, schedule-based charging control is a standard expectation in EVs now. Set a departure time, and the car charges to the right level by morning. It’s a feature I’ve used hundreds of times across multiple vehicles, and it works well enough that most owners don’t think about it. The question of who owns the intellectual property behind that automation is one the industry hasn’t fully sorted out.

Tesla’s IPR strategy — challenging the patent at the PTAB rather than in district court — is standard practice for large tech and auto companies facing patents they’d prefer not to license. It’s cheaper and faster than litigation. But when it fails, as it did here, the patent survives stronger than before. A PTAB institution followed by a validity affirmance at the CAFC is about as solid a validation as a patent gets short of Supreme Court review.

One important caveat on what comes next: Charge Fusion already filed infringement cases in Texas Western District Court and Delaware District Court against Tesla before this IPR was even decided. Those cases may already be active. If they are, the question of licensing or infringement liability isn’t a future scenario — it’s a current one. Watch those dockets.

Judge Dyk’s dissent is worth following. If Tesla petitions for en banc review, that dissent is the argument. But these petitions rarely succeed. The more likely near-term development is that Charge Fusion presses forward with one or both district court cases, now armed with a confirmed, court-tested patent. Expect meaningful movement on that front within the next 12 months.

Tesla was aggressive here — it challenged the patent, fought it through the PTAB, and appealed to the CAFC. That’s not a company ignoring threats. It’s a company that picked a fight and lost it. The lesson isn’t to challenge more patents. It’s to build stronger arguments before filing, or to assess earlier whether licensing is cheaper than litigation. As more EV companies use legal action as competitive strategy, patent portfolio management is becoming as important as hardware specs.

Editorial Note: AI tools were used to assist with research and archive retrieval for this article. All reporting, analysis, and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.