Like many things in life, you’re at risk unless you limit your risk.

Here’s what that means, and here’s what you can do about it:

As you know, Fleetwood invented 2-way wireless group response technology. We’ve been granted nearly a dozen United States and European patents and have a similar number of patents pending on our technology. A list of our awarded patents and patent applications is available on this website . No other manufacturer in this industry segment has so much intellectual property concentrated on wireless audience and student response hardware.

The anticipated consequence to our innovation and selling success has recently arrived. 'Me-too' products are now popping up in our served markets. 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 these patent analysis and infringement determinations to be best served by legal professionals. We also honor the propriety of limiting the details of those legal discussions to the manufacturing parties and their legal representatives.

It’s in that legal context that you may want to consider limiting your risk by placing responsibility on the product manufacturer (where it should be anyway).

While customers certainly need to be concerned about patent issues, they should not be invited into complicated patent discussions by competitors who are unwilling to provide 'insurance' for any inference or statement they make about their products avoiding another manufacturer's intellectual property.

If you are considering purchase of a me-too product, and if you are concerned that the product may not evade Fleetwood's extensive intellectual property portfolio, then you may want to seek a Letter/Agreement of Indemnification (also known as a ‘Hold Harmless’ letter/agreement) from that manufacturer.

Such a legal document supplements Uniform Commercial Code responsibilities and notifies both you and Fleetwood that the manufacturer is standing by its intellectual property position and will defend you against legal actions that may occur as a result of its actions making/selling its product plus your commercial activities selling/using its products.

Indemnification letters/agreements are common in this type of situation. Therefore, it should be easy for you to be formally protected by a credible company. Just remember: It’s probably not a reassuring sign if a competitor is unable or unwilling to promptly provide such a document.

Also, an indemnification letter/agreement should not limit its scope to our awarded patents. Me-too products could also provisionally infringe our patents pending. It would be wise to make sure the competitor’s indemnification letter/agreement includes verbiage sufficiently addressing those future risks.

Fleetwood’s position is simple: We intend to vigorously enforce our intellectual property. 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.

last updated: 05/08/09

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