Teradyne and Elite Robots Settle Their Cobot Software Fight, Terms Sealed and No Admission

Teradyne Robotics and Elite Robots settled their dispute over Universal Robots software on October 1, 2026, and neither company has said what Elite agreed to. The terms are confidential and carry no admission of liability.

The announcement came in a statement on the Universal Robots site. Jette Withers, Teradyne Robotics' chief legal officer, said: "The parties have resolved their pending legal dispute by mutual agreement." The statement says the settlement is not an admission of liability, infringement or the validity of any intellectual property right. The Robot Report reported that Charles Xie, Elite Robots' overseas sales director, was a co-signatory of the joint statement.

What the dispute was about

Teradyne Robotics A/S, the Odense, Denmark, parent of Universal Robots and MiR, sued Elite Robots Deutschland GmbH in March 2026 after a cease-and-desist letter went unheeded. The claim was copyright infringement. Teradyne said it held "irrefutable evidence"; the filings were not public and no source names the module or file at issue.

David Brandt, vice president of R&D and chief technology officer at Universal Robots, described the allegation this way, as quoted in The Robot Report's April 21 report:"Our team in the U.S. looked at the software, and it was something very close to our software in their robots." He added that Elite's robots included a setting that lets users disable safety settings, and Teradyne has warned safety authorities in Denmark, Germany and the U.S.

Elite Robots, which is based in Shanghai, says it has more than 10,000 deployments in over 35 countries and more than 200 patents and IP assets.

The sequence, from filing to settlement

Date	Event	Source
March 10, 2026	Teradyne Robotics sues Elite's German subsidiary	The Robot Report
April 21, 2026	Regional Court of Hamburg issues a preliminary injunction	The Robot Report
August 2026	Teradyne sues JAKA Robotics' German subsidiary on three patents	The Robot Report
October 1, 2026	Settlement announced, terms confidential	Universal Robots

The Hamburg order barred Elite's German arm from offering or distributing the software and products containing it in Germany "until further notice", and required it to disclose its infringing acts and its customers. Jean-Pierre Hathout, president of Teradyne Robotics Group, said at the time that "this is not a final ruling from the court." No hearing date had been set.

The settlement announcement does not say whether that injunction was lifted, made permanent or simply allowed to lapse. Teradyne had also said it would go after distributors and partners that kept offering the software; the announcement is silent on that as well.

What is at stake for Universal Robots

Universal Robots reported $293 million in revenue in 2024, according to The Robot Report, whose author estimated roughly $240 million to $250 million for 2025. Teradyne describes itself as the leading developer of collaborative robot arms and says it has sold more than 100,000 robots since 2005. The Robot Report's article gives no market share figure.

UR's seventh-generation Gen 7 platform is built around the PolyScope X software, which the booth in the photograph above advertises. The software is the asset in dispute, which is why the Elite case ran through copyright law.

The patent route is the one Teradyne took in August against JAKA Robotics. That suit names the German subsidiary of the Chinese cobot maker and cites three patents, all assigned to Universal Robots and all with a March 2006 priority date. The Robot Report says the case is ongoing.

Licensing is a live question elsewhere in robot software too: The Terminal reported that AWS's open-source Physical AI Toolchain launched with no licence file in the repository. And the robot makers Teradyne sells against are changing at the top, with Boston Dynamics naming Rohit Prasad as chief executive.

What is still unknown

Three things are missing from the public record: whether money changed hands, whether Elite changed its software or products, and whether the Hamburg order still binds Elite Robots Deutschland. Settlements that follow an early injunction often end quickly, an IP lawyer not involved in the case told The Robot Report, though the article cautions that the pattern may not apply here.

Next public checkpoint: James Davidson, Teradyne Robotics' chief AI officer, is scheduled to speak at RoboBusiness in Santa Clara on October 20 and 21, where the JAKA case and the UR Gen 7 rollout are the obvious questions for the company.