SALT LAKE CITY — A federal jury has found Vivint Smart Home infringed on patents for doorbell camera technology and ordered the Provo-based company to pay the plaintiffs $45 million.
A statement from a Vivint spokesperson says the company plans to appeal.
The plaintiffs, SkyBell Technologies, Inc., introduced its first doorbell camera with smartphone connections in 2014. It has licensed its patents to home security companies such as Ring and ADT.
“Over the last 10 years, [we] invested heavily in our intellectual property,” said Desiree Mejia, SkyBell’s co-founder and chief operating officer, in an interview with FOX 13. “As well in our video doorbell security system and the back end.”
Mejia said SkyBell reached out early to Vivint to discuss licensing the technology to it.
“We never did consummate a deal,” she said.
Then in 2015, Vivint introduced its own doorbell camera that sends an alert to a cell phone when there’s someone at the door.
“And at that point in time,” said Giovanni Tomaselli, SkyBell’s president, “we knew as a company that they were infringing on our intellectual property.”
“It is theft,” Tomaselli added.
The doorbell and cell phone feature soon became a big selling point for Vivint, which markets its home security and monitoring systems to households. The feature has been promoted in television ads and multiple videos on Vivint’s YouTube channel.
SkyBell filed its lawsuit in 2020 in federal court in East Texas. At trial, Vivint argued that two federal bodies ruled some of the patents were invalid. It also argued the patents were based on technology that others could figure out.
But Monday, in its verdict form, the jury found that Vivint both infringed on the patents and “willfully infringed” on the patents.
Tomaselli said the $45 million is what SkyBell requested and reflects “$1 a month per user” over about a three-year period.
“But what's more important,” he said, “is that the justice prevailed.”
The $45 million is about 2% of Vivint’s annual revenue.
A Vivint spokesperson said in a statement:
‘Monday’s verdict is extremely disappointing given that a judge with the US International Trade Commission had previously issued a ruling that these same patents are invalid. Further, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board recently ruled that certain related patents were also invalid. We plan to mount a vigorous appeal not only as to the invalidity of the patents but also that Vivint does not infringe these patents and are confident these issues will ultimately be resolved in our favor.”
It’s the second time this year a jury has ruled against Vivint. In February, two days before then Vivint Arena was supposed to host the NBA All-Start Game in Salt Lake City, a federal jury in North Carolina ordered Vivint to pay $189 million to rival CPI Security. CPI claimed Vivint used deceptive tactics to lure its customers into signing with Vivint and that Vivint didn’t properly address the problems.
Vivint is appealing that verdict, too.
Houston-based NRG Energy acquired Vivint in a deal that closed March 10.