I saw an article today that Garmin has lost a patent infringement lawsuit to Navico (Lowrance, Simrad etc) and must stop selling all it’s Downvu products. The article was on boat.com A lot of people have been getting on the Garmin bandwagon.
Mwal
I’m very disappointed with this news.
I have 6-7 yr old Garmin 276c. It performs a the day I purchased it.
My next boat I was goin to go full Garmin, although I’m not sure I would utilize this technology properly.
Here’s the good news.
The company said it has already “designed, implemented and manufactured an alternative design that addresses the issues in the ITC ruling.” It also said the ruling will have no impact on sonar scanning products already purchased by customers and dealers, or on any products going forward.
Statement from Garmin regarding the ruling
“Garmin intentionally designed its products to prevent infringement of Navico’s patents. We disagree with the ITC and plan to appeal the determination,” Garmin vice president and general counsel Andrew Etkind said in a statement.
“However, as with the Johnson Outdoors ITC determination we announced in November, we have already taken steps to ensure that we can continue to provide Garmin DownVü scanning sonar products. Garmin has already designed, implemented, and manufactured an alternative design that addresses the issue in this ITC ruling.”
Garmin noted that the ITC reversed a decision in July by an administrative law judge in favor of Garmin and said the ITC also found that some asserted claims of one of Navico’s patents were invalid, that there was no infringement of one of Navico’s patents by any Garmin products and that one Garmin scanning sonar system design did not infringe any of Navico’s patents.
The ruling will have no impact on Garmin products that customers and dealers have already bought or any products purchased going forward, the company said.
“The ITC expressly found that Garmin did not intend to infringe Navico’s patents,” the statement reads. “Garmin will continue to vigorously defend the non-infringing configuration of these first-generation DownVü scanning sonar products through appeals and an ongoing litigation in Oklahoma. The ITC ruling applies only to Garmin and has no impact on any existing dealer inventory or any products already purchased by our customers.”
Garmin said the transducers that the ITC ruling affects “will be available shortly with the alternative design solution.”
Although the redesign addresses the ITC’s findings, Garmin said customers and dealers will not notice a change to user interface, installation or compatibility with existing Garmin products or accessories.
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