Honeywell Aerospace has sued Rivian and Lucid for patent infringement, filing separate complaints on Friday in two federal courts, less than three months after it was spun off from Honeywell International.
The suit against Rivian was filed in the US District Court for the District of Arizona. The case against Lucid was filed the same day in the Eastern District of Texas, according to the court dockets.
Honeywell Aerospace US LLC is the plaintiff in both cases.
Neither complaint has been made public outside the federal courts’ paid PACER system, and the patent numbers have not been reported.
The Rivian Case
Honeywell alleges that Rivian’s EVs infringe seven patents that it developed for aircraft but that also apply to ground vehicles, Bloomberg Law reported on Monday.
The patents cover vehicle safety monitoring, traffic display systems, autonomous navigation, sensor fusion displays, laser-based navigation, hazard detection and software licensing management, according to Bloomberg Law‘s account of the complaint.
Honeywell is seeking monetary damages, an injunction, enhanced damages for alleged willful infringement and attorneys’ fees, the report said.
A request for enhanced damages is not a finding. A court can award them only if it finds the infringement was willful and egregious.
The defendants are Rivian Automotive LLC and Rivian Automotive, Inc. The case, No. 2:26-cv-06694, has been assigned to Michael T. Morrissey, and a magistrate election form was attached to the assignment, the docket shows.
The parties can decide whether to consent to a magistrate judge for the whole case.
Honeywell has demanded a jury trial. The complaint was filed with 14 exhibits.
The Bloomberg Law report does not identify which Rivian models or systems are accused.
The Lucid Case
The case against Lucid Group, Inc. and Lucid Group USA, Inc., has been assigned to District Judge Rodney Gilstrap in the Eastern District of Texas, one of the busiest patent judges in the US, according to the docket.
That complaint was filed with 21 exhibits, seven more than the Rivian filing. The exhibits could be additional patents, claim charts, accused products or other material, and the docket does not say which.
Filing both suits on the same day does not show that they assert the same patents or accuse similar features. The seven categories reported by Bloomberg Law come from the Rivian complaint only.
Honeywell has demanded a jury in the Texas case as well. Its local counsel there is Melissa Richards Smith, according to the docket.
No details of the Lucid complaint’s patents or accused products have been reported.
The Plaintiff
Honeywell Aerospace became an independent public company on June 29, trading on Nasdaq under the ticker HONA.
It owned more than 9,000 active patent assets filed in about 30 countries as of September 30, 2025, according to a draft registration statement it filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Honeywell has previously enforced patents on aviation technology, including terrain-warning systems in a case against Universal Avionics and Sandel Avionics in the early 2000s. There is no indication that the patents asserted against Rivian and Lucid come from the same families.
The suits against Rivian and Lucid are the first patent cases brought by the newly independent aerospace company against carmakers that EV has found.
The Legal Terrain
Under the Supreme Court’s 2017 ruling in TC Heartland, a defendant can be sued for patent infringement only in the state where it is incorporated, or in a district where it has committed alleged acts of infringement and has a regular and established place of business.
Rivian Automotive, Inc. and Lucid Group, Inc. are both incorporated in Delaware.
Venue is tested for each defendant separately, so the two parent companies and their operating subsidiaries may each face a different analysis in Arizona and the Eastern District of Texas.
The complaints mark the latest attempt by patent owners outside the car industry to assert rights over driver-assistance and autonomy technology.
Perrone Robotics sued seven carmakers, including Tesla, Toyota and Volkswagen, in November 2025 over robotics software used in automated driving.
Neither Rivian nor Lucid has filed a response, according to the dockets as of Monday.
