After being challenged in the European Courts and losing, Leisuretech has moved to shore up its US A-Bus tent in an effort to hold onto patent revenue streams from US manufacturers.According to LeisureTech CEO Andrew Goldfinch, who refuses to issue press releases to Australian media and once described the Australian market as “irrelevant”, the company has made an application and been granted a “continuation patent” for its existing US patent for A-Bus technology.
In an interview with US custom installer website CE Pro, Mr Goldfinch said, “The new patent has the effect of broadening and strengthening the A-BUS patent.”
Mr Goldfinch claims that his continuation patent takes into account improvements made to his A-Bus patent; however, George Dexter, the CEO of European technology company Armour Group claims that “the A-Bus technology will be obsolete within two years”.
He also said that the configuration of systems that send audio, data and power are sent over a single Cat 5 cable is much different today compared to the way it was back in 1997, when LeisureTech first applied for the patent.
According to CE Pro, the original patent makes specific references to analogue signal transmission. The new patent has eliminated all specific references to analogue audio.
LeisureTech said that the qualifying or limiting language of the patent could construe that the patent does not cover digital audio transmission. Mr Goldfinch said that the new patent pertains to both analogue and digital signal transmission.
He said, “The new language clears up any vague areas and brings the language in line with the spirit of the original patent. The additional patent is a clear endorsement of the A-BUS technology as a patentable invention in the US.”
Last month LeisureTech lost a major case in the European Courts. (See separate story).
Mr Goldfinch also stands accused, along with his accountant, of deliberately placing the original LeisureTech company into administration in an effort to avoid paying legal and damages costs associated with his patent fight in Europe.
Armour Group claimed that this action was fraudulently done to avoid paying legal bills.
Armour Group pursued the revocation of the European patents claiming its Systemline brand has been using a similar method of power and audio transmission over Cat 5, albeit with differences in the form of balanced line audio and a DC-to-DC conversion circuit.
Armour Group has always said LeisureTech’s A-Bus patent lacked substance and was “an obvious solution using standard audio integrated circuits and industry standard Cat 5 cable”. Its contention is that nobody “could claim a monopoly” on this technology, said Mr Dexter.
