Richard Lutton Jr. has been named general counsel at Nest Labs.Update: Added Honeywell’s response to Nest Lab’s court filing on Thursday.
The next front in the high-stakes, high-tech patent wars after smartphones? Thermostats.No, really, and that helps explain why Nest Labs, a hot Silicon Valley start-up, has recruited Richard Lutton Jr., Apple’s former chief intellectual property officer.
Nest announced that Mr. Lutton had joined the company as general counsel on Thursday morning, an hour or so after it filed a fiery rebuttal to the patent-infringement suit that Honeywell brought against Nest in February.
A bit of the back story: Nest is populated with talented recruits from Apple, Google, Microsoft and other technology companies, and it has developed a digital “learning” thermostat.
Nest’s leaders speak of the thermostat as a device, and a marketplace, ripe for disruptive innovation. A smart thermostat that learns and adjusts to homeowners’ comings and goings can deliver big savings to consumers, while delivering the environmental payoff of saving energy and curbing pollution, they say.
Nest introduced its first model last fall to rave reviews and a surge of orders. In February, Honeywell, the thermostat giant with about half of the market in the United States, sued Nest in a Federal District Court in Minnesota.
Honeywell alleges that the design and functions of Nest’s thermometer, from its shape to set-up routines, borrow from other companies and, in particular, infringe on seven Honeywell patents.
In its lengthy reply on Thursday, Nest asserts that not only is the start-up not infringing, but that Honeywell’s patents are toothless. Clearly, the Nest legal strategy is to try to invalidate the Honeywell patents.
“Honeywell’s patents in this case are no good,” the Nest filing states. “They are retreads — already invented by others years before.”
The Nest indicates the time needed to reach 72 degrees. The thermostat was designed by teams that worked on Apple’s iPod.In response to Nest’s filing, Honeywell said in a statement Thursday morning that it “stands by” its claims of patent infringement, and added that its intellectual property is “a prized business asset that we protect vigorously.”
The real test of a patent, it is said, comes not in the patent office but in court. That seems to be the likely path in the Honeywell-Nest conflict.
Mr. Lutton said the Honeywell case was a good initial project, but was not why he joined Nest. The real opportunity, he said, was to “make a difference in building a truly great company,” which is applying advanced technology to the big economic and social problems of energy and pollution.
Nest, he said, is an innovator, so “the intellectual property strategy really matters.”
Mr. Lutton, 44, left Apple at the end of last year. He had guided Apple’s patent policy for a decade, through the iPod, iPhone and iPad. In 2001, when he began, Apple was filing about 50 patents a year. The current pace is more than 1,000 a year, he said.
His Apple years were a great experience, he said, but he had started to “feel like it was time for my next act.”
Nest’s chief executive, Tony Fadell, a former Apple executive who led the design teams on the iPod and iPhone, was a longtime colleague. Mr. Fadell got in touch with Mr. Lutton and introduced him to Nest, its vision and its team. Mr. Lutton has been an adviser to Nest since the start of the year.
The Honeywell suit has apparently not yet had any impact on Nest’s business. The start-up is just catching up with back orders and continues to ramp up production at its contract manufacturers. “We’re doing great, busting through our numbers,” Mr. Fadell said, though the young company has not disclosed sales figures.