Seems to me that Nikola's suit against Tesla is so utterly without merit that it deserves the label "patent troll". I did a brief Google search on the subject of this lawsuit, and I see that Nikola has actually filed the suit, but I don't see that it has progressed beyond that.
Hopefully once it actually gets put before a judge, he (or she) will review it and summarily dismiss it as a suit without merit. But you never know; courts often don't do what a reasonable layman would expect them to.
It's good to see that several news sources are stating that the USPTO awarding these patents to Tesla makes Nikola's case harder to win. Certainly a patent troll is going to find it harder to win a patent infringement case, if the USPTO awards a patent to the very product the patent troll is claiming is infringing upon its patent!
Courts often -- I'd say usually -- do the right thing. I thought Tesla's suit against Fisker was ridiculous; the one claiming that Fisker hadn't performed in good faith when Tesla contracted him to design the Model S for Tesla. Looking at the absurdly exaggerated design of the Fisker Karma EV versus the beautiful and highly desired Model S, I'd say Tesla got the better end of that deal, by far! So I think the courts did the right thing with Fisker winning when Tesla sued him.
