The Battle Of Thermostat Intellectual Property

No, really:

The thermostat business is getting ugly. I understand that sounds crazy, but it’s true. Late last year Tony Fadell, the guy who created the iPod at Apple, launched Nest, a new company that aims to reinvent household devices. Nest’s first product is a beautiful, easy-to-use, $249 “learning thermostat.” It launched to rave reviews, and sold out instantly. I installed one and tried it for a few weeks last year. In a piece in the New York Times, I called Nest my favorite thermostat out of several I’d tried, including Honeywell’s Prestige. In Slate, I called it one of my favorite technologies of 2011. In retrospect it’s clear why Honeywell put on a full-court press to show me all the ways its thermostat was superior to the Nest. For the first time in years, the thermostat industry was getting covered by the press—but in every story about the Nest, Honeywell was described as a sitting duck.

On Monday, the duck struck back. Honeywell filed a wide-ranging patent infringement suit against Nest, alleging that the startup used seven different Honeywell inventions. It seems likely that a well-funded startup like Nest would have thoroughly researched and prepared for this kind of lawsuit, but looking over the patents in question, some of Nest’s technology does look similar to Honeywell’s. One Honeywell patent is for a thermostat with a “rotatable selector,” meaning a dial that you turn to control the device—exactly what Nest is. Another covers a thermostat that tells you how long it will take for your house to get to the desired temperature, which is one of Nest’s best features. Another advantage of the Nest is that, unlike the Prestige, it doesn’t need professional installation. It can plug into most thermostat setups and automatically “trickle charge” power from the wires connected to your furnace or air conditioner. It’s a brilliant idea—and one that Honeywell apparently patented in 2009.

The Honeywell v. Nest lawsuit is being justifiably criticized as another black mark on our broken patent system. If Honeywell invented all these cool features, why didn’t it make something of them? Last year an executive told GigaOm that Honeywell long ago created a thermostat that learned user’s preferences the way Nest does, but it abandoned that project because it believed people wanted to program their thermostats. (It’s true—programming my thermostat is my favorite activity in the world, right after taking out the garbage, shaving, and researching nanny taxes!)

I can't comment too far on how broken the patent system is, but I can say that patent attorneys make too much money.  The point made later, that Honeywell patented a bunch of ideas just to sit on them, reminds me of Michigan and Ohio State back in the days before scholarship limits, when they would sign kids they didn't need, just so they wouldn't go play for somebody else.  I guess, looking at my old Honeywell thermostat, that seems to be an apt description.