Honeywell, creators of the iconic round thermostat found in millions of homes and Fortune 100 manufacturing giant, has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Nest Labs, maker of the sold out Nest Learning Thermostat. Honeywell alleges that the Nest infringes on seven patents that cover the user interface, remote controls, internal design, how the thermostat draws power from the home, programming, and automated energy savings.
Honeywell is seeking to enjoin Nest Labs and their retail partner Best Buy from further sales and are also seeking damages. This is on the heels of similar lawsuits filed against Venstar Inc. and ICM Controls. The patents were issued between 2005 and 2009 and a cursory review points out that several of the patents relate to the “rotatable control”, aka the click wheel. Listed patents include:
U.S. Patent No. 7,634,504 - "Natural Language Installer Set Up for Controller"
U.S. Patent No. 7,142,948 - "Controller Interface with Dynamic Schedule Display"
U.S. Patent No. 7,584,899 - "HVAC Controller"
U.S. Patent No. 7,159,789 - "Thermostat with Mechanical User Interface"
U.S. Patent No. 7,159,790 - "Thermostat with Offset Drive"
U.S. Patent No. 7,476,988 - "Power Stealing Control Devices"
U.S. Patent No. 6,975,958 - "Profile Based Method for Deriving a Temperature Setpoint Using a 'Delta' Based On Cross-Indexing a Received Price-Point Level Signal."
Honeywell certainly has the legal budget to swamp Nest for a decade, and may or may not have grounds for their claims (note: we work in energy efficiency not patent law), but this lawsuit has engendered a great deal of outrage here at the ECHQ – For the last two decades even the best programmable thermostats have suffered from a serious VCR problem – they have just been too complex and too difficult for most homeowners to use effectively. As a result of that data on their usefulness has been undermined, utility driven efficiency programs have failed, certain smart people dismiss their effectiveness completely, and millions of homeowners have written off the whole category.
We only sell what we consider to be the best and easiest to use programmable thermostats on the market (we would like to be selling the Nest, but since everyone that is has just gotten sued…), and we still spend hours providing additional support in an effort to help our customers use them effectively. As such, we are depressed that the Honeywell has chosen to sue the one company that has really pushed to overcome the limiting complexity by focusing on interface design.
As I mentioned above, these patents are all fairly recent (2005 to 2009), so it’s not like Honeywell has been sitting on them for decades, but if Honeywell has the IP to produce an effective and elegant thermostat that has the range of features and predictive ability to rival the Nest, we wish they would get it out to market and sell them by the millions rather than trying to rough up the competition with legal action.
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