Elon Musk's Terafab hits a roadblock before making a single chip, receives cease-and-desist order — firm files trademark lawsuit, has sold Tera-Fab-branded lithography tools for over a decade

In an unexpected turn of events, Terafab has faced an odd roadblock as a small U.S.-based company called Tera-Print sent a cease-and-desist letter to SpaceX and Tesla back in May to stop using the Terafab name. The company with tera-scale ambitions has run into a tabletop-sized problem because the Tera-Fab name has already been used for about a decade by Tera-Print, according to PCMag.As it turns out, Tera-Print sells tabletop-sized Tera-Fab-branded beam pen lithography (BPL) tools primarily aimed at bioengineering and prototyping of microfluidic devices and has used the brand for about a decade. The U.S. Department of Defense appears to be a client of Tera-print, which uses Tera-Fab.Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.