Is this a Shotgun Wedding Resulting from the Recent Patent Infringement Settlement?
March 27, 2009

On February 3rd of this year CEPro and others reported on the patent infringment settlement resulting from the law suit filed by Lutron against Control4.

The CEPro article reported: "the latest casualty is Control4, which settled today in a battle that began in May 2006. Lutron had claimed that Control4 infringed several patents covering inventions in the area of RF communications. As part of the settlement, Control4 has signed a license agreement with Lutron, and agreed to pay royalties on past and future sales of certain RF lighting-control products that allegedly infringe on Lutron patents".

Well, the above certainly explains why Control4 suddenly raised MSRP prices on in-wall wireless dimmers and switches to $129 from $99 shortly after. For those Dealers not plugged into the backdrop of a settlement, the price increase certainly seemed out-of-place in a recessionary market.

Lutron, on the other hand, has been aggressive in going after other lighting control companies like Leviton for infringment on this 1998 patent. Lutron has been an established supplier of wired lighting controls since its inception in 1961, favored by many lighting system designers. But appeared as a late entry into the wireless world with it's RadioRA product. In fact lighting designers were known to be critical of Control4 a short two years ago, often stating it was "unproven technology".

Control4 Dealers on the other hand have been controlling Lutron Sivoia shades systems via relay outputs available on all previous Home Controllers (except the new HC-200) and Contact/Relay Extender units, but had no good way to interface to existing Lutron lighting or satisfy homeowners who planned to install a Lutron lighting system in a new home.

Well that may also change in the next several weeks as an un-named source has reported Control4 is getting ready to beta test a new driver for the Lutron HomeWorks Interactive system. Did Lutron build this development into the law suit settlement, or did Control4 just recognize the large base of installed Lutron systems as a natural extension of its push into the existing home market?

For those unfamiliar with Lutron, a diagram of the Homeworks 4 Series System is shown below.

The Control4 home controller would appear in the above diagram in the Third-Party box, and connect to the Lutron processor via ethernet or serial RS-232. Control4 will support Lutron dimmers, switches, keypads, and GRAFIK Eye in its configuration. And also report status and act on events generated by the Lutron system. Plus provide the ability to control the Lutron system using Control4 programming and Navigator user interfaces.

For more information on the Lutron HomeWorks Interactive system click here.