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Nest Counters Honeywell Allegations of Patent Infringement
PALO ALTO, Calif. --(Business Wire)--
Nest Labs, Inc. (www.nest.com)
today countered in court what it believes are meritless allegations by
Honeywell (News - Alert) of patent infringement in relation to the innovative Nest®
Learning Thermostat™. In an Answer and Counterclaims filed today in the
U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, Nest denies
infringement and validity of the seven patents asserted in a Honeywell
complaint filed in that court on Feb. 6, 2012.
"As reported in prior litigations, Honeywell has a pattern of trying to
stifle new market entrants with unfounded legal action," said Richard
"Chip" Lutton, Jr., vice president and general counsel of Nest. "Instead
of filing lawsuits, Honeywell should use its wealth and resources to
bring innovative products to market. Nest will defend itself vigorously
in court and we'll keep our company's focus where it should be - on
developing and delivering great products for our customers."
The following is an excerpt from the Nest Answer and Counterclaims. The
complete filing is on record with the U.S. District Court for the
District of Minnesota.
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This lawsuit is a bald effort by Honeywell to inhibit competition
from a promising new company and product in a field that Honeywell
has dominated for decades. Nest Labs, with its Nest Learning
Thermostat, has generated consumer and critical enthusiasm around
the home thermostat-a device that most people had long since written
off as a bland, dumb appliance. No less than the New York Times,
Wall Street Journal, and USA Today have lauded the Nest Learning
Thermostat as "gorgeous, elegant and very, very smart"; "intuitive …
sophisticated … [and] right on the money"; and "hot"-unlike "the
thermostat on your wall [that] is probably a blah-looking controller
you face only when it's time to warm or cool the house."
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That "blah-looking controller" on the market today is very often
from Honeywell, which has long dominated the thermostat market, but
has yet to generate a device that offers ordinary consumers as much
as the Nest Learning Thermostat. Instead of countering product
innovation with its own new products, Honeywell has a track record
of responding to innovation with lawsuits and overextended claims of
intellectual property violations. Indeed, in a prior intellectual
property case Honeywell brought, the court noted that, "whenever
Honeywell learned that a competitor was selling or planned to sell a
round thermostat, it responded with threats of expensive litigation,
and it managed to eliminate the competing design either by
settlements or by buying the competitor outright." Eco Mfg. LLC v.
Honeywell Int'l, Inc., 295 F. Supp. 2d 854, 867 (S.D. Ind. 2003).
Honeywell lost that case because the court found that its
intellectual property was invalid.
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Honeywell's patents in this case are no better. Nest does not use
the Honeywell patents; but even if the patents covered what
Honeywell alleges, they are hopelessly invalid. They are
retreads-already invented by others years before, and in some cases
by other teams at Honeywell that Honeywell hid from the Patent
Office when pursuing the patents in this lawsuit. For example,
Honeywell's '958 patent on remotely controlling temperature
setpoints marks no difference from a prior art Honeywell patent
(U.S. Patent 4,657,179) that expired in early 2004. Honeywell's '988
patent on power stealing is also indistinguishable from another of
its own patents (U.S. Patent 5,736,795) filed years earlier.
Moreover, Honeywell's idea for displaying temperature setpoints on
an LCD inside a rotating ring, as shown in its '899 patent-in-suit,
was implemented years earlier by employees of Volkswagen who
ultimately abandoned their own patent application because a search
found dead-on prior art. And one doesn't need an exhaustive
literature search to conclude that Honeywell's '504 patent on
presenting a user of an HVAC controller with "complete grammatical
sentences" is not worthy of a patent, though a quick search does
turn up prior U.S. Patent 5,065,813, which confirms that the '504
patent is invalid.
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As set out more fully below in paragraphs 137-177, Honeywell's suit
is a misuse of intellectual property intended to harass Nest Labs
and interfere with its commercial activities and relationships.
Consistent with Honeywell's pattern of past behavior, Honeywell's
motives are clear from a review of the merits and scope of the
patents selected by Honeywell. Honeywell wants to use this lawsuit
to scare a new competitor-and its customers, retailers and
installers-out of what Honeywell believes is its space. But it will
not work.
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Nest Labs answers Honeywell's Amended Complaint here as a first step
in establishing the invalidity and noninfringement of Honeywell's
claims, and intends to follow through to correct the errors that led
to the issuance of the Honeywell patents (errors in many cases
caused by Honeywell's failure to tell the Patent Office about its
own prior art), and to stop, and seek compensation for, Honeywell's
latest effort to exclude competition rather than face it honestly in
the market.
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About Nest
Nest is focused on addressing home-energy consumption with an elegantly
designed solution - one that people will actually enjoy using.
Founded by Apple (News - Alert) alums Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers, Nest brings together
a world-class team with the broad backgrounds needed to deliver an
amazing product that blends technology with ease of use. Nest is
privately funded and based in Palo Alto (News - Alert), Calif. For more information,
visit www.nest.com.
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