Honeywell, a company long known for its commercial and residential thermostats, filed a patent infringement lawsuit on Monday against Nest Labs, the outfit that launched the highly publicized Nest thermostat last October.
The suit claims the Nest Learning Thermostat infringes on seven of Honeywell's patents, spanning categories as generic as a "natural language installer" (a set-up menu, by any other name) to an "HVAC controller," a standard component of any temperature control system.
"Competition is good and we welcome it, but we will not stand by while competitors, large or small, offer products that infringe on our intellectual property," Honeywell environmental and combustion controls president Beth Wozniak said in a statement issued Monday.
As for Nest, the company is keeping mum on specifics: "We have not yet reviewed the actual filing, which we learned about this morning through Honeywell’s press release," said Nest Labs spokeswoman Kate Brinks in an e-mail to Wired. "We will provide comment once we’ve had the opportunity to review it."
The Nest thermostat made waves within the consumer tech community when it was unveiled last year, thanks in part to its creator Tony Fadell's pedigree: Fadell led Apple's iPod and iPhone division as a vice president before leaving the company in early 2010. To follow up two of the most successful consumer tech products of all time with a thermostat, of all things, was a peculiar move.
Fadell's thermostat, however, aims to revamp how consumers use their heating and air conditioning systems. Like the iPod, the Nest is a sleek piece of industrial design, deviating from the bland boxes we're so accustomed to seeing on our walls. Artificial intelligence programming within the Nest turns your heat and A/C on or off, depending on who's home, who's awake and who's just wasting energy.
Honeywell's infringement claims seem broad at first glance, akin to many suits being thrown around in the smartphone industry as of late. Best Buy, the retailer that offers the Nest thermostat, is also named in the suit.
In its press release filed on Monday morning, Honeywell claims its suit against Nest and Best Buy is in line with other suits it has filed recently against Venstar Inc. and ICM Controls, again for infringing on "thermostat and combustion controls patents."
