Hi all! Could somebody please explain the relationship between Wheelock and Siemens? I’ve seen fragments of information all around, but no real concrete explanation of what’s going on between them. Here are the bits that I’ve pieced together, but I’m not sure if they are correct:
In the mid-2000s, Wheelock sued Siemens because the Siemens (formerly Faraday) devices were too similar to theirs. The lawsuit was settled before going to trial.
The settlement agreement entailed that Siemens would rebrand Wheelock devices for eight years. Siemens continued to rebrand Wheelock devices beyond that requirement.
Siemens later purchased the patent for some of the rebranded Wheelock equipment.
Are these statements correct? Please feel free to discuss whatever you know!Here are a couple of specific questions to guide:
Q1. What was Wheelock actually alleging against Siemens in the lawsuit? Clearly there was some concern that Faraday/Siemens had violated Wheelock’s intellectual property; what exactly was violated?
Q2. Did Siemens actually buy the patent to the Z-series and possibly other Wheelock lines? If so, when did this happen, and is Wheelock still the OEM for those devices?
I have seen some misconceptions/dissenting opinions about what happened, so please only reply if you are truly knowledgeable about the subject or have additional questions. I would like for this topic to be factual and informational. If you have a link to any of your sources, that would be appreciated!
Almost all of that is correct, except for the reason: Wheelock mainly sued Siemens due to copying the former’s sync protocol, however I also recall finding documents that claim they also sued Siemens due to similarly-designed notification appliances as well (that was one of at least three reasons they sued according to said documents).
Yes, that is correct: given Siemens is in a lot more industries besides just life safety they apparently didn’t think it was worth starting back up production of the Faraday signals once the terms expired, which would explain why they didn’t return after the 8 years was up.
That I’m not sure about, however due to Wheelock discontinuing the Z-series after 2010 & Siemens continuing to use it in their systems far past that year it wouldn’t surprise me if they did indeed purchase the patent so they could continue making them (though whether Wheelock still makes them for Siemens or if Siemens makes them themselves I have no idea).
As I said, mainly the fact that the Siemens (formerly Faraday) sync protocol was almost a complete copy of Wheelock’s (why Wheelock waited until Siemens had acquired both Cerberus Pyrotronics & Faraday to sue though I have no idea), though I believe there’s also evidence to suggest that Faraday’s U-series of remote strobes might have looked too similar to the RSS as well (even though I think Faraday started producing said strobes before the horizontal RSS came out in 1997).
I suspect that the lawsuit was filed in response to the release of the U-MHU and S-HP in 2002, which were Siemens’ first notification appliances that offered equivalent functionality to the AS and E70/E90. However, the only infringements in this court docket involved the sync protocol and two-wire control on the AS, since Wheelock never patented the RSS design.
I also remember reading that Siemens obtained the patents for the Wheelock devices, but I am not sure if this is true. I would expect Siemens to make some changes to the products such as engraving their logo onto the devices instead of placing their logo over the Wheelock logo. Also, @CaptainChris wrote on the wiki that Siemens will be discontinuing the Z series this month (but note that the Z series devices are still on Siemens’ website), which would make sense if the devices were still being produced by Wheelock.
