Real estate lockbox provider SentriLock, LLC, is taking one of its competitors to court over alleged patent infringement.
The Ohio-based showing service provider announced on Feb. 15 that it filed a lawsuit against Carrier Global, the parent company of Supra—another lockbox company—claiming the company knowingly copied SentriLock’s patented technology and subsequently commercialized it.
“The issue here is that our major competitor in the electronic lockbox space is utilizing technology that SentriLock has patents for going back quite some time,” says SentriLock Founder and President Scott Fisher.
The patents in question are United States Patent No. 7,949,541, issued on May 24, 2011, and United States Patent No. 8,606,589, issued on Dec. 10, 2013.
Fisher indicated that Supra appropriated certain functions that SentriLock has patents on without paying the company to use them, despite SentriLock’s previous attempts to work out a licensing agreement in the past.
“They decided that that wasn’t the route that they were going to take, so we had to initiate litigation to bring them to the table to say, you guys can’t use our stuff without paying for it,” Fisher says.
Since starting the company in 2002, SentriLock has grown into a trusted lockbox and showing service solution provider in real estate. SentriLock has also become an “Official Lockbox Solution” of the National Association of REALTORS®, according to a statement.
The company’s products serve more than 400,000 REALTORS® and have powered more than 10 million home sales.
SentriLock develops electronic lockboxes that offer information data reporting, which Fisher says is critical to REALTOR®s’ work.
“For many homeowners, showing their home is a disruptive event,” he says. “Wouldn’t it be great if that homeseller knew when that showing was over? That’s what our technology enables.”
The company’s lockboxes offer data and notifications to homeowners, alerting them when a showing is over.
From a client-support perspective, Fisher also notes that their data collection feature has become helpful to agents helping clients understand the market activity around them.
“We’re very similar in terms of the access part between our competitor and us, but there are all kinds of specialized features that each company brings to the table that differentiates the marketplace,” Fisher says.
SentriLock’s lawsuit aims to end Carrier’s infringement and recover damages caused by Carrier’s alleged willful misappropriation of SentriLock’s technology.
“Innovation in the real estate technology sector takes capital and time—and it’s the foundation of our commitment to the industry,” Fisher said in a statement. “If Supra is permitted to profit from patents that it does not own, a chilling message will be sent to others in the industry that this illegal activity is acceptable and that investments in innovation may not be able to be recouped by companies like ours who heavily invest in improving technology for our customers.”
Carrier Global did not immediately respond to RISMedia’s requests for comments on this story.
Jordan Grice is RISMedia’s associate online editor. Email him your real estate news to jgrice@rismedia.com.
