They just might.

Fleetwood invented 2-way wireless audience response technology and has been granted nearly a dozen United States and European patents and a similar number of patents pending on its technology. Fleetwood’s patents and patent applications apply to infrared (IR) as well as radio frequency wireless systems and protect the breadth of Fleetwood technology.

Such success has spawned competitors selling 'me-too' products. Fleetwood routinely contacts those competitors to formally notify them in accordance with United States Code as to our issued United States patents and patents pending. Fleetwood wants to provide full opportunity for a competitor to reach a business resolution of a disagreement before Fleetwood pursues other means.

In some cases, a competitor’s attorneys strenuously deny infringement of our patents but refuse to provide details about how their systems work or support for their denials. We always request systems for evaluation, but sometimes competitors simply refuse to provide them. This leaves us to obtain systems on our own and evaluate them against our patents. When we discover infringement, sometimes competitors admit their error and sometimes they do not.

In all cases, however, we believe patent analysis and infringement determinations to be best served by legal professionals, not novices. We also believe such issues cannot be tried in the court of public opinion. That’s not only because important privileged communications are simply not available for public review, but those communications sometimes reveal errors or deception on the part of one party. It is impossible for the public to make a decision about which party is right in the absence of all relevant information. That’s why patents and patent infringement actions are very complex and coordinated by legal professionals.

On its website, a competitor once took a most irregular position of inviting the public to “request accurate and specific information” of any patent owner who may claim that the competitor’s products infringe published patents. While we welcomed the opportunity to communicate with their customers and prospects as they suggested, we found such a recommendation quite unusual. Normally, manufacturers do not abdicate patent issues to be resolved by each of their individual customers and prospects. We respected our competitor’s decision to do this, and so we accepted their invitation to provide detailed information to their present and prospective customers – within the boundaries of legal propriety and good form, obviously.

A list of awarded patents and patent applications is available in the FAQ section of this website. Please note that we believe that we will obtain increased patent protection from our nearly dozen pending patent applications.

We believe the vigorous enforcement of our intellectual property rights is consistent with our company’s principles (visit Fleetwood Group, Inc.'s website for more info). Moreover, our enforcement directly benefits our many resellers and customers in the industry-at-large who have made significant investments in our innovative technologies.

We stand with the industry against unfair competition. If you have specific questions about this communication, please send them to Fleetwood's Patent Enforcement team.

updated: 05/08/09

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