Escort Inc. vs. Cobra Electronics Corporation
Over the past several months there has been quite a bit of debate regarding the enforcement of patents in the radar detector and laser jamming industry on RadarDetector.net
Wikipdedia states that the elements of patent infringement includes any party that manufactures, uses, sells, or offers for sale patented technology during the term of the patent and within the country that issued the patent, is considered to infringe the patent.
As the operator of RadarDetector.net, I have come under fire from radar detector enthusiasts for censoring messages relating to devices that I suspect violate patents and by manufactures for not censoring enough of these messages because they feel the messages themselves encourage the illegal importation and use of these products within the USA.
Today while searching the net for cases involving the speed countermeasure industry, I was surprised to find a recent filing by Escort Inc. against Cobra Electronics for patent infringement regarding Escort’s new 9500i radar detector.
In December of 2003, Escort Inc. filed patent number 6,670,905 (905 patent) for a GPS enabled radar detector that aids in the management of unrelated or otherwise unimportant sources (false alerts) and also maintains a list of the known stationary sources in nonvolatile memory. After the patent was grated to Escort, I would suspect that they used it in the development of their new 9500i radar detector.
I was aware of Escort’s patent and was one of the select few that had an opportunity to test and review the Escort 9500i’s before its release at the 2007 CES Show in Las Vegas. Therefore it was somewhat of a surprise to me (and several others in the radar detector industry) that several weeks prior to the CES show, Cobra Electronics issued a press release of having the first GPS enabled radar detector, the XRS R9G.
It was then that I asked contacts that I had inside Escort if they had any comment about Cobra’s infringement on their patent. Then the official “off the record comment” was that they needed to look at Cobra’s new detector and their patent and let the attorney decide. After ten months of not hearing any follow-up I figured that the topic was dead, how wrong I was.
Today I located Escort’s complaint 1:07-cv-852 filed October 12, 2007 in the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio against Cobra Electronics alleging that Cobra had violated Escort’s 905 patent with Cobra’s manufacture and sale of the XRS R9G.
On November 11th, Cobra Electronics filed their response to the court disputing Escort’s claim of infringement and filed a counter claim against Escort alleging that Escort violated their “279 patent” entitled “Electronic Signal Detector with Mute Feature” in development of the 9500i.
As both sides are now locked in litigation, it is doubtful that I can get either an official or unofficial response from either side. So we will keep watch for any new legal briefs or filings in this court until the case settles.
4 Responses to “Escort Inc. vs. Cobra Electronics Corporation”
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This is the way it is done. Other companies take note and quit bitching that your patents are being violated. If they are due what these companies did and that is take it to court and make the lawyers richer. Myself personally I would invest this money in making a better product
I have seen many patents and Escorts 9500I patent covered all bases and was very broad, but detailed on the things that count.
All we can hope is Cobra settles out of court and promises to make there RD not give off falses any more.
Cobra is doing 120mph in a 55 zone without a radar detector.:-)
It does NOT have Bluetooth, confirmed via online chat with “Brian” from the Escort website.
Looks really useful. Especially with the red light photo enforced camera locations all over Chicago and the suburbs! Plus I tend to drive a bit faster than I should.