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."

Get a Nest

[Myopic]

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.

Common technology in large HVAC systems

[Animats]

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 [ecobee.com], 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.

Re:Get a Nest

[Quantus347]

In the industrial sector, which is their primary business and one where they have been leading innovation in for decades. They have these types of products, but they are geared toward serious use and not being a "fun toy" and so are priced above the average consumer level.

The fact is Honeywell has been making computer controlled systems like this for decades. Just because some little knockoff came along years later and packaged up a cheap version for consumers does not mean they have the right to infringe on legitimate proprietary designs. Which if you read the article include, specific control methods, the internal mechanism used as the actual thermostat, as well as some of the circuitry design used for power management.

Here's the Trademark record - 1982

[jtara]

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 [uspto.gov]

(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.

Re:Really?

[hey!]

I have read the patent. It's not long. The only claims that have any possible relevance to the Nest device are pretty much described verbatim in the abstract. Other than that, the claims are commonplace stuff like using gears or belts to drive a potentiometer shaft which encodes the dial's position. That's older than the hills. The patent is padded out somewhat with all the different things you could stick on the stationary part (indicator lights, buzzers, bi-metal thermometers, company logos), but none of that is essential. There's a moving part and a stationary part, and the stationary part may or may not have stuff on it.

What is described in the patent is a user interface in which a digital thermostat mimics the operation of an analog thermostat. In the device as described, the position of a rotating dial on the outside of the chassis set some value. Judging from the pictures the Nest UI doesn't work that way. It is more like a jog-dial in which the direction of motion controls moves the value up and down; the absolute rotation is irrelevant.

The only way to stretch this patent to cover the Nest device would be to grant Honeywell exclusive rights to any UI in which a rotation part encloses a stationary one, regardless of the mechanism or mode of operation. In other words, Honeywell is claiming a patent on a visual design.