It was primarily about two things: intellectual property and competitive methods.

In November 2005, Fleetwood Group, Inc. announced the voluntary dismissal with prejudice by Responsive Innovations, LLC and Turning Technologies, LLC of their lawsuit against Fleetwood pursuant to a settlement agreement reached among the parties. Fleetwood was pleased to resolve all of the claims asserted by Turning and Responsive in the lawsuit which had been filed three months earlier, including claims by Turning and Responsive against Fleetwood alleging unfair competition and tortious interference with business or contractual relations.

Fleetwood is the owner of a number of U.S. patents relating to wireless interactive group response technology. With respect to Turning and Responsive, Fleetwood agreed that a specific RF system currently sold by Turning and Responsive (ResponseCard(R)* RF Part No. RCRF-01 and ResponseCard(R) Receiver Part No. RRRF-01) does not infringe Fleetwood's patents involved in the lawsuit (including reexaminations or reissues of those patents).

Fleetwood believes that its proprietary methods and structures of synchronizing wireless communications for collision-free data exchange between keypads and their associated base station have proven over time to deliver the most efficient, scalable, and successful solutions for audience response communications. Fleetwood's Reply® systems and their OEM derivatives (e.g., eInstruction’s** CPSrf and CPSPulse, Option Technologies Interactive’s*** OptionFinder® IQ and G2, etc.) are professional audience response products which use advanced RF technology to control wireless data traffic both to and from the base station in a way that permits the base station to communicate privately and interruption-free with each keypad. It does all this without sacrificing capacity or speed -- two very important needs of the audience response professional. (For example, certain model base stations can poll and acknowledge responses from 1000 keypads in 5 seconds.) Additionally, Reply® systems can synchronize keypad transmissions to avoid congesting the airways with unnecessary RF data and noise. Such synchronization prevents the possibility of data collision at the base station and allows Reply® systems to cohabitate peacefully with a plethora of other contemporary wireless devices and networks (e.g., 802.11, WiFi, Bluetooth, etc.). This intelligent design has many obvious benefits, especially when combined with our unique spread spectrum frequency hopping methods.

With over 3 MILLION RF keypads sold, Fleetwood is recognized as the top USA manufacturer of purpose-built wireless RF audience response systems. Through the years, we've earned industry appreciation for the ruggedness, security, and flexibility that our innovative products offer. Our warranties of up to two years on Reply® systems show we're confident in our products and appreciative of the industry's trust. Moreover, the scores of software applications written by our value added resellers and numerous third parties -- many of which have access to audience response hardware from alternative sources -- serve as tangible testimony to the industry's confidence in our wireless hardware, our ISO-9001 certified design and manufacturing procedures, and the Fleetwood relationship.

As a builder of much of the interest in the audience response industry, we feel a commitment to this industry, our many resellers, our numerous customers, and our employee owners. We do not take any of these commitments lightly. Please rest assured that Fleetwood remains a good steward of its innovative technology and is committed to the legitimate enforcement of our intellectual property rights where we note infringements have taken place.

If you have any questions about this or any other intellectual property related communication, please send them to Fleetwood's Patent Enforcement team.

* ResponseCard is a registered trademark of Responsive Innovations, LLC, OH

** CPS RF is a trademark of eInstruction Corp., Denton, TX

*** OptionFinder is a registered trademark of Option Technologies Interactive, LLC, Orlando, FL

Last edited: 05/08/09

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