iRobot rival succumbs in court battles

Established defense contractor iRobot has prevailed in courtroom battles against Robotic FX, effectively gaining an unconditional surrender from the upstart military-industrial wannabe.

An iRobot-supplied SUGV helps a pair of soldiers clear a building during an evaluation exercise early in 2007.

(Credit: U.S. Army)

Late on Friday, Burlington, Mass.-based iRobot said that two federal courts had ruled in its favor. The U.S. District Court in Massachusetts determined that Robotic FX and founder Jameel Ahed--a former iRobot employee--had misused trade secrets belonging to iRobot, while the U.S. District Court in Northern Alabama determined that Robotic FX had deliberately infringed on patents.

As if that weren't enough, a related settlement requires the disbanding of Robotic FX, with certain assets to be retained by iRobot, and the banning of Ahed from competitive activities in the robotics industry for five years, according to iRobot. As of Sunday morning, the Robotic FX Web site was pointing to an iRobot page.

For a number of years, iRobot has been supplying the Pentagon with its Packbot technology--small, tracked robots that have been instrumental in locating and neutralizing explosive devices in Iraq. The company--best known for its Roomba, Scooba, and Looj gadgets for consumers--is also working on a related system known as SUGV (for small unmanned ground vehicle) as part of the Army's Future Combat Systems initiative.

A few months back, Allsip, Ill.-based Robotic FX had won a major contract with the U.S. Army to supply just those sorts of robots. But in a harbinger of the court rulings, the Army just days ago turned that contract--a $286 million, five-year deal to crank out up to 3,000 robots--over to iRobot. It plans to deliver the first 101 of those new robots "for urgent deployment."

In total, iRobot says it will have spent about $2.9 million on the dispute.

For the most thorough coverage of the months of legal wrangling between iRobot and Robotic FX, including links to the Massachusetts and Alabama rulings, check out Xconomy.com.

[`WarpKat]

What Happened to Healthy Competition?

I guess if Microsoft can do it, anybody can do it.

[pnb_pm]

Healthy competition

Your comment strongly suggests that you have not researched this story. The article gave you a good link to do so.

[Dachi]

Healthy theft you mean?

I don't remember all the details, but Robotic FX was basically a knock off of the the iRobot PacBot. The arm, the "flipper" all basically identical.

It is one thing to build a competing robot, but another to just rape the PacBot design and sell it for less money.

It gets worse though, one of the engineers who worked on Robotic FX also worked at iRobot, and there was proof that he emailed himself several PacBot documents in his last couple days employed at iRobot.

I believe in competition as much as the next guy, but in this case I would have to strongly side with iRobot.

[Penguinisto]

In this case it was theft.

Sorry, but stealing actual trade secrets from someone else and making a knockoff (another thing MSFT has a history of being really good at), cannot be allowed to continue in the name of 'competition'.

Competition is excellent, but only if it involves original work.

/P

[rturner2]

Roomba...

I just wish they could make their Roomba actually work and not stuff up after 12 months! The sensors get full of crap and then the robot doesn't move around properly - this is now my second that has stuffed itself! This is not much of a time saver, you spend your time cleaning the Roomba instead of the carpet.

[lanny3]

Wrong acronym for SUGV

It's not: Small Utility Ground Vehicle

It's: Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle

If the writer had just Googled it or checked the iRobot web site, he/she would have gotten the correct meaning.

[Jon Skillings]

Fixing the acronym

Thanks for the catch. You're right--the U stands for "unmanned." I was going from memory after not having written about SUGV and FCS for a while.