An Update on Legal Matters
(Miramar, Fla. and Irvine, Calif. – Aug. 28, 2018) On August 27, 2018, a U.S. competitor of Hytera's issued a press release about a pending case at the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), on the same day that the ITC made publicly available an initial determination originally shared with the parties on July 3, 2018. In that release, our competitor selectively represented certain elements of a 283-page Initial Determination of Administrative Law Judge MaryJoan McNamara.
Our competitor's decision to emphasize in isolation aspects of a pending case that seem to favor it instead of Hytera is in keeping with its previous efforts to sway public opinion and affect our relationships with Hytera dealers and their customers. It is consistent with its scheme to leverage every procedural step of multiple litigations against Hytera to maximum negative effect, to enforce their monopolistic grasp on the U.S. market for DMR communications solutions.
Our competitor sought to highlight in particular our employees' choice to invoke the Fifth Amendment in addressing repetitive sequences of questions, though doing so is a well-established privilege in U.S. law and a common practice in legal proceedings.
Hytera is in the U.S. market to stay. We do not believe our products infringe our competitor's patents, and we recently debuted new DMR products in the U.S. that we are confident will be attractive to our dealers and customers. Hytera remains committed to supporting our U.S. dealers and customers no matter the outcome of this case.
What our opponent chose not to include in its selective summary of the initial determination was that ALJ McNamara ruled there was no damage to MSI for some of their intellectual property claims. Far from concurring with MSI’s assertion that such intellectual property was key to Hytera’s rise in the market, the Judge determined that MSI could not demonstrate that the asserted technology was even included in their products.
We are confident that Hytera's new-generation DMR products, debuted in June of this year and with features that will be highly useful to our customers, will allow us to continue to market and sell DMR solutions in the U.S. market and grow our U.S. business whatever the outcome of the ITC proceeding.
Since MSI petitioned the ITC in March 2017, Hytera has actively defended its rights in accordance with the relevant guidelines of ITC. We will respond to the Commission's pending decisions as appropriate at the time they are issued. Hytera is committed to providing advanced technologies and solutions to improve the communication effectiveness and community security in the U.S. Our focus remains to empower and protect businesses, industries, and other organizations by furnishing innovative land mobile radio communications products.
