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Honeywell Vs Nest: When the Establishment Sues Silicon Valley
An anonymous reader writes with this quote from an article at TechCrunch:
"Honeywell filed a multi-patent infringement lawsuit against Nest Labs and Best Buy yesterday. The suit alleges that Nest Labs is infringing on seven Honeywell patents. Honeywell is not seeking licensing fees. The consumer electronic conglomerate wants Nest Labs to cease using the technology and is actually looking to collect damages caused by the infringement. Damages? Bull****. This is about killing the competition."
Patent hold get to license the technology or not, based upon their own preferences. You can't FORCE a company to share it's patents.
HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
if you treat the nest as a computer -- which it is -- one that happens to be hooked up to your HVAC, most of the patents involved are not patent worthy.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I have a Nest and it is awesome. Don't buy it because it will save you money (it may reduce your montly cost a little, but it'll take a while to make up for the cost of the device), rather buy it because it is a fun toy. It's very well implemented, looks nice, the software is great, and you can do cool stuff like connect to it from your pod.
Fuck Honeywell. If their patents have been violated, then where are their Nest-like products? I smell another patent troll.
I had no idea these Nest Thermostats existed, but they look awesome. Now that I know about them I can go out and buy one and enjoy an increased quality of life. Thanks, Honeywell, for bringing them to my attention!
That is the purpose of each and every patent. That is the point of them. They do not grant one the right to produce something, they grant one the right to stop others from producing something, thus killing competition, for a limited time. The original poster does not seem to understand this simple fact.
Large buildings already have control systems that do this, and Honeywell manufactures many of them.
The "Nest" device may well be mostly hype. (What is "far-field motion detection", anyway?) There's only so much you can do with input from one location and nothing but on/off control over heating and cooling.
Compare the EcoBee, which does the same job, and probably better. EcoBee can handle remote sensors for outdoor air temperature. It measures humidity, which "Next" doesn't claim to do. It can be set up to control fans and dampers. (One of the biggest wins in HVAC management is figuring out how much air to take from outside and how much to recirculate.)
Nest is a status symbol, not a HVAC management system. It looks cool. It creates the illusion that it's doing something "green". It probably helps a little.
Nest keeps being referred to as novel and innovative in the article and honeywell as the old giant, yet how can that really be when they clearly infringed on patents that honeywell previously had. Honeywell was clearly more novel and innovative before Nest even existed.
Concur! Geez the lame bottom-of-the-market-sucking thermostat they included in my freaking expensive-as-Hell house is so cheap looking, under-brained, and just plain unconsidered as to be insulting. Honeywell did a lousy job innovating, and thus allowed a market opening in a market they OWNed for decades. I figure they deserve what they get.
Go Nest!
TFS doesn't say (probably to drive more views to the linked page) but this is all about thermostats.
Some of the patents include "thermostat is round and can be rotated", "thermostat asks the user questions", and stuff like that. Considering how skeptical many people are about Apple's "design patents" on "rounded rectangles with touch screens", I would be skeptical of some of these as well.
Now some of the other patents, like leeching power off of the main system, may hold up under more scrutiny (though this technique has been in wide use throughout the industry; I recall two-wire sensors that derive their power parasitically from the data line, and if the patent covers similar technology then it should be revoked).
Also, FYI, you can compel some patents to be licensed. FRAND patents, for instance; Samsung got into hot water when they tried to use FRAND patents as a weapon against Apple.
IMO, you shouldn't be able to use patents to shut down competitors. Especially competitors that outsmarted you by building a better product than you could.
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To anyone that has purchased a cheap consumer thermostat, the need or market for improvement is absolutely obvious and the IP thicket is pretty much the only conceivable problem.
The Nest is definitely not "cheap". In fact, it costs more than Honeywell's Prestige thermostat, which does all of the same things that the Nest does (which is what Honeywell has patents on). Your problem is in buying a "cheap" thermostat. The products are there, just not at your price point, and the Nest definitely doesn't fit into your price point.
Compulsory licensing agreements exist in the United States in a number of industries. Just a few include "West Publishing citations to court opinions", "U.S. v. 3D Systems", "US v. Miller Industries", "Dell Corporation VL Bus patents".
These compulsory licenses were put in place to prevent extremely anti-competitive behavior. Just like Motorola's latest suit against Apple, demanding 2.25% of all iPad sales. Motorola can't just demand a billion dollars per patent infringement case and clean out Apple by setting absurdly high values. In the US, it is very much possible for anti-trust lawyers to step in and force a deal for a "reasonable" patent pricing deal.
If a submarine patent were written that would effectively block every single phone manufacturer from producing phones unless they pay exorbitant fees, the average consumer would suffer considerably. These compulsory licensing deals are put in place to prevent established companies from being forced out of the market due to a single patent.
You're kidding right? Honeywell has been innovating in the thermostat area. They have thermostats priced from $5 all the way up to $200 for their top of the line Prestige model....which does the same things that the Nest does...for cheaper. Yeah, maybe it's not brushed metal and glass, but it doesnt look "ugly".
If we're going to take THAT broad a view of damages, then Honeywell owes me money for 'damages'. They have, after all, abused the patent system and now the taxpayer funded courts.
What if a company patents something that is "vital to the security of the country," like a "Terrorist-Find-O-Matic?" Can't the government say, "tough shit, we need that?"
I was about to start working on my "Crotch-Groping-O-Matic" device, but if the TSA folks are going to just steal it from me, I won't bother.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I'd say it's ALSO a fact that the only products Honeywell has been offering consumers are basic, dumb thermostats or overpriced digital models with very basic functionality and a high price-tag that you're presumably supposed to pay to get that respected Honeywell name badge on the front.
If there are issues over some specifics, such as the particular control mechanism used, violating Honeywell patents? Then fine ... let them demand licensing fees for those items and move on. The fact Honeywell hasn't done this and instead, demands the product be pulled from the market and damages collected (before most people have even had the chance to BUY one!) speaks volumes about their true concerns here.
The Nest is almost impossible to think of as a "cheap knockoff" of anything Honeywell sells, consumer OR industrial. The Nest is designed very much along the same lines as the original Apple iPod ... meant to be very easy to use, with a simplified UI that encourages its use instead of intimidating a person into leaving it alone.
Your argument here sounds a bit like an architect who primarily designs skyscrapers (with a little bit of side work sketching up basic 1 bedroom shotgun shacks) claiming another architect designing elegant 2 story luxury homes must cease and desist, because he's clearly violated a number of design concepts used in those skyscrapers (and probably not so much in the shotgun shacks, but wants you to note he's familiar with those low-end products too).
This looks like a case where a company successfully innovated in the marketplace, and then took out patents to help secure their position.
The position adopted by the author of TFA was not subtle and, in my view, does not help the discussion.
Yes, that's the impression I got too. Although Honeywell's behavior suggests they want Nest out of the market entirely. For starters, they didn't serve papers to Nest -- Nest found out via the press release from Honeywell. Also, Honeywell wants Nest to simply cease & desist. I wish these kinds of lawsuits never happen -- a legitimate claim being used to obliterate a true innovator. If I was Honeywell, I would have used Coase's theorem to negotiate with Nest, pointing out that Honeywell was in the right, but they should work together to find a mutually beneficial outcome.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
The whole purpose of the Nest is to "learn" your habits and then figure out how to save you energy. Most reports say that users don't like that feature because it's very poor, so they opt instead to manually control it. They just like the "look".
Needless to say it's being developed and sold by a guy who made the iPod, and Apple is famous for selling devices at a premium that just "look nice."
I wanted to like the device but if it doesn't really save me money, while Ecobee and the Honeywell Prestige systems do, then it's pointless to buy.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
No shit. What the hell do you think patents are for? They may or may not be socially desireable, but don't lose sight of the fact that they are government-granted monopolies. Preventing competition is what they are all about (Licensees are not competitors. They are customers.)
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Base model Bayweb thermostate is 220$. I'd not call that MUCH cheaper.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Let's see:
Patent number: 5482209
Filing date: Jun 1, 1994
Issue date: Jan 9, 1996
So patents filed before June 2005 the patent term is the longer of 20 years from the filing date or 17 years from the issue date. Check.
Expiration is Jan 9, 2014, based on 20 years from the filing date.
Let the Lawsuit drag on for two years until the patent expires, so as long as they don't get an injunction they will just pay some damages and presumably be on their way.
If it is their patent, filed and awarded fair-and-square then they have a government issued, temporary license for a monopoly on that technology as a reward for their invention. The damages would be lost profits that the inventors were deprived of for the unauthorized use of the invention. If the technology is so useful then competitors must either license it (if inventor allows it), buy the patent, spend their own R&D to develop their own alternative, wait for the patent to expire, or buy the company that owns the patent. That's fair.
Who cares if it is "establishment" or not. What if it were Joe Brown with his patented nose hair trimmer? Would he be wrong in asserting his rights because it "kills competition?" I know it is fashionable to bash big business, but c'mon. You can't play favorites here, its the law and applies equally.
I haven't heard that Toyota has brought suit against Honda yet.
Makes you wonder why we have these types of suits in the technology arena.
http://kristianwidjaja.com/blog/2009/03/the-2010-honda-insight-a-toyota-prius-copycat/
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
case where a company successfully innovated in the marketplace
Since when is voice control a *novel concept* anymore? Voice control has been around before Honeywell filed the thermostat patent. Equivalent to the patent dross of companies somehow connecting their product to the internet.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
To anyone that has purchased a cheap consumer thermostat, the need or market for improvement is absolutely obvious and the IP thicket is pretty much the only conceivable problem.
The Nest is definitely not "cheap". In fact, it costs more than Honeywell's Prestige thermostat, which does all of the same things that the Nest does (which is what Honeywell has patents on). Your problem is in buying a "cheap" thermostat. The products are there, just not at your price point, and the Nest definitely doesn't fit into your price point.
I believe the Nest attempts to learn your habits, which the Prestige does not do. I'm not entirely certain that this is a useful feature, mind you, as I figure most people's schedules are regular enough to just program in. However, the point remains that the functionality is somewhat different.
When I upgraded my HVAC to 2 stage heat/cool, they could not setup the 2 stage heat to be activated from the thermostat controller, so it had to be set to switch to hi mode after 15 minutes of continuous demand. Why? Because there were only 5 wires. Why couldn't they design a thermostat/HVAC that only needed 2 wires? Instead, it still uses an ancient protocol that needs more wires for more features.
I kinda saw this coming, but didn't grasp the implications, e.g. patent issue.
When I saw Nest, I chuckled at their claims that this was such a revolution. Why, the thermostat will learn your usage patterns by itself!
Scroll back like 30 years or so ago when I lived in Dertroit. A friend of a friend, I think in Ann Arbor, invented this thermostat call MagicStat. It learned your usage patterns all by itself. That's why was was unimpressed by Nest's claims. Yawn. Long, 30-year yawn.
Honeywell bought the MagicStat patents. I presume they've maintained those and taken out new ones throughout the years.
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But that would involve cooperation and allow for a competitor. They have a lovely cash cow, and they're doing what they can to make sure nobody gets a slice.
It would be one thing if Honeywell was actually planning on improving their thermostats, but they aren't. And they don't want anyone else to improve them either. It's not quite the same as patent trolling (in the NTP sense), but more like AT&T with modems.
Here's the trademark listing for Magic-Stat which was issued to QuadSix Corporation of Ann Arbor, Michigan filed in February, 1982, and subsequently assigned to Honeywell Corporation. One
http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4008:kk95v8.3.2
(I realize the trademark has nothing to do with patents. Just using the trademark to help fix the date and origination of the "learning thermostat" idea.)
So, it looks like Nest took 30 year old technology and created a buzz by giving it a bit of Apple shine.
I actually had one of the original Magic-Stats, before it was sold under the Honeywell label. I was reasonably happy with it. The unique feature is that it would learn the inertia of your system, so that it would achieve the desired temperature at the time that you wanted. That, and the unique simplified user interface. e.g. you just set it to the desired temperature when it doesn't seem right, and it learns your pattern from that.
It just amazes me how much buzz these guys got over something that was invented 30 years prior.
http://yourhome.honeywell.com/home/products/thermostats/
Are there really 53 different products there? I might have miscounted.
I think people on Slashdot especially are smart enough to be insulted. What's the difference between a 7-day thermostat, a 5-2 day thermostat, and a 5-1-1 thermostat? I'm pretty sure if you popped the cheap injection-molded plastic cover off, you'd find the same 8-bit microprocessor and eeprom in each of them. Why should they all be priced differently? And could you or I, sitting in a room somewhere, even dream up fifty different feature sets for a thermostat? The fact that they named their high end product "prestige" is itself an indictment.
Honeywell wouldn't be sinking so much $$ into legal attacks if they didn't feel threatened, and they wouldn't feel threatened if they knew they had a better product. The issue is, Honeywell has had decades with minimal competition in this market, so they let everybody have their way with the interface. Look at the web page! No two of them have the same interface, because the interface is a feature. Seriously, game controllers have better interfaces.
Decades later, I still have to walk over and switch from "heat" to "cool" and back, dozens of times each year. My house is five, FIVE, years old. If Honeywell really gave two craps about the consumers, they could have migrated THAT one useful feature downmarket at some point. Nobody buys a house based on the thermostat, and both Honeywell and the builders know it. That's why most of the thermostats installed in new homes, regardless of the home's price, are crappy. Do I really need to buy a million dollar home before I get a thermostat that both "heats" and "cools" without my intervention?
Honeywell marketed all these at the residential builders, that's why there's dozens of different price points and no consistency in the interfaces or clarity in the feature sets. Nest is marketing their one product at the people who actually live in the homes, who have to actually use and live with these things.
Very good and detailed by Katie Fehrenbacher coverage here: http://gigaom.com/cleantech/the-details-behind-the-honeywell-nest-lawsuit/ http://gigaom.com/cleantech/how-the-honeywell-nest-lawsuit-could-hamper-innovation/ http://gigaom.com/cleantech/honeywell-hits-nest-with-a-law-suit-over-smart-thermostat/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_T87
60 years on one design, i think the patent on the circular design has expired.
They are probably suing on software patents. ( which shouldnt be allowed in the first place).
This is about killing the competition.
Patents are expressly designed to increase revenue flow to the patent holder. It is *always* about inhibiting the competition. Sometimes the inhibition is total ("killing"), sometimes it is limited. The decision is up to the patent holder.
Honeywell are anti-social profiteers who are using the system as it is designed.
Patents are a good mechanism. They have a positive role in a GDP maximizing economy -- inventors satisfy wants by coming up with new ideas, and a laissez-faire economy would not reward them for doing so. The well-regulated free market benefits from some degree of patent grants and enforcement.
Ever since the inception of the U.S. patent system, however, we have been increasing the duration and strength of patents, and decreasing the threshold of novelty and non-obviousness. For 200 years we have been turning the knob in the same direction; increasing the rate at which we transfer revenue from producers to inventors. We have never seriously considered turning the knob the other direction -- reducing the strength of patents in general -- and it is beginning to show. It is inhibiting our economic advancement.
We need ask whether we are channeling too much or too little revenue using the patent system knob. Are corporations spending too much on production and too little on invention, or the other way around? Are they spending too much of their revenue on acquiring patents, patent enforcement, and patent defense, or should they be spending more?
We design for behavior like Honeywell is exhibiting. Honeywell deserves to be shunned for harming our GDP for their own enrichment, and we also need to recognize that the general solution lies in diligently measuring and adjusting the patent system for optimal output.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
They "innovated" round knobs, thousands of years after the first round knobs were known. The innovated leaching power from one system to drive another thousands of years after windmills and water wheels were invented. Nothing on their list is newer than 1000 years old. But it's "new" because someone put "in a thermostat" on the end. That's what makes it a classic patent troll. Taking one-click shopping (again, done for thousands of years, the back-end database of such being the oldest known writing ever discovered) and adding "on a computer" on the end and getting a patent (and successfully defending that patent for years, they'd have been better of trademarking it and not patenting it).
Learn to love Alaska
Worse than that, people assume "of a machine" when you talk voice control. Actual voice control is documented back thousands of years. Training dogs to respond to voice controls, military voice controls of machines (through a set of humans to relay the messages) and such. People have used voice control since language was invented. "Dear, where's dinner" predates us all, and is a form of voice control. But add "in a thermostat" or "on a computer" and people suddenly go stupid and think that the base concept is novel and unique.
Learn to love Alaska
Through life I've never had a cool new product when it first came out. Not only do I have a Nest installed....now it's part of a big lawsuit! Bonus! Now I guess I should go to a rave and show off.....let people set my Nest via iPhone. Do I have to buy trendy shoes and get a special haircut now? P.S. Honeywell can lick my love pump. I'm keeping my Nest!
That's what they did when I upgraded...
I have a White Rogers touchscreen thermostat. I'm quite happy with it, though it's not remote controllable. I can set it to do auto heat/cool, or else leave them separate. I leave them separate.
The reason is that in spring and fall the temperature might vary a lot during the day. Rather than run the AC and the furnace on the same day (wasting energy both ways) I'll live with slightly more variation in temperature as long as the average temperature is okay.
Actually they allowed 3M Filtrete to introduce wifi thermostats and radio thermostat makes em.
http://radiothermostat.com
The 3M 50 filtrete is a branded version of their products. They are the cheapest wifi thermostat today and available from home depot.
http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-202352449/h_d2/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10053&langId=-1&keyword=3m-50&storeId=10051
... the big box retailers selling Honeywell products made a statement and pulled Honeywell products from their shelves. It sends a nice message: "You don't like competition? Fine, don't compete."
radiothermostat is $100 and is wifi enabled, open source code to drive it.
http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-202352449/h_d2/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10053&langId=-1&keyword=3m-50&storeId=10051
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The thing has a privacy policy and an end-user license agreement. Remember, this thing is a slave to a server at the manufacturer, and they can download new firmware. So they have total remote control over your furnace. They disclaim all liability. There is no warranty. (Honeywell normally offers a 5-year warranty). They can discontinue the service at any time.
You can't even resell the thing. The software license doesn't transfer. So if you sell your house, the thermostat has to be replaced.
Poloroid locked up all the patents for instant film. Kodak tried to break their patents, and lost. Honeywell has a competing systems, though not exactly the same. They still own the patents on the systems in question. This is not a public standard. Fair and reasonable licensing do not apply. Like it or not Nest is dead. The story itself is flamebait.
Yep, agree with both you and the grandparent poster.
I started wondering what was going on when I reached this gem in the summary:
Damages? Bull****. This is about killing the competition
Someone seems angry, unreasonably so. And as for that article:
Out of the six or so Honeywell models I tried, all were cheaply made and featured piss-poor UIs. I literally punched my wall after becoming so frustrated with one of the Prestige models.
Wow, someone else with anger management issues. He PUNCHED THE WALL because he was frustrated with a thermostat. Someone needs a kitten, except he'd probably throttle it in a blind rage.
If you can't quite make the leap to the Nest, and what you really want is the ability to run the thermostat from your smartphone, 3M makes a nice WiFi Thermostat that you can pickup at Home Depot for under $100. I was motivated by laziness to switch out my old programmable thermostat for the 3M one a few months back. Yes, it's not as cool as the Next, but you can switch it into away mode from anywhere you can get online if you forget when you go on vacation. The 3M thermostat uses Radio Thermostat Company of America's WiFi module and software interface. I haven't read into it much, but it appears that the API is open so you can in theory write your own software to control the thermostat in the event of the company going under and their web services disappearing.
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
Good journalism! What device is it, what does it do? No summary of that in easy to see place.
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