In the case of this article, PPI is not the armor company but rather something altogether different. Apparently, ERGO Falcon (Hines) who actually holds patent #7,627,925 for the “Electrified Handguard”, has licensed their design to Prototype Productions, Inc. who further assigned rights to a company with the inspiring name of PPI Ventures Two (we didn’t make this up).
Last week, PPI filed suit in US District Court of Eastern Virginia against RESET Inc for patent infringement for their RIPR. When you absolutely want to get someone into court quickly for Intellectual Property issues, file in the US District Court of Eastern Virginia.
We wrote last year about RESET’s Rifle Integrated Power Rail (RIPR). RESET is working with ATK on the design but we haven’t heard much about the project since we mentioned that it would be at the Infantry Warfighter Conference at Fort Benning.
As you can see from this extract from a marketing brochure, despite its name, the RIPR is not an actual rail but rather an adapter that attaches on top of a weapon’s Mil Std 1913 railed fore end and upper receiver. This is a little bit problematic as it will only fit a rail and upper receiver that are exactly the same height. As we know, this isn’t always the case. I’m still not sure why they call it a rail, as it isn’t. Unfortunately, that the RIPR is an actual rail seems to be central to PPI’s claims against RESET.
For full details of the suit please refer to the court filings obtained by SSD.
The real issue at hand here is that while the lawyers representing PPI have been very diligent in spelling out exactly what damages they want awarded by the court, they haven’t specified exactly what RESET is alleged to have done other than a very broad, “RESET has infringed and is infringing the Hines patent.” But how? In addition to the Hines patent, the exhibits submitted to the court by PPI seem to want to show how successful RESET has been in their endeavor. Perhaps that is the crux of the suit?
Furthermore, neither ERGO Falcon nor RESET are exactly pioneers in the powered rail market. Wilcox has had prototypes for years and we have seen European efforts as well. I haven’t seen the PPI model but I have seen the RIPR and it actually works. On the other hand, Falcon ERGO developed the initial IP and is a pretty popular brand that produces small arms accessories. PPI used the Hines (Falcon ERGO) patent to develop their powered rail under an Army tech development contract called a Small Business Innovative Research award. Based on this fact, some might make the argument that the US Government might own a stake in the IP rights for the Electrified Handguard which, by the way, is an awful name for something you want Soldiers to carry.
Generally, these things seem to work themselves out and the ensuing agreements keep both parties mum on the subject so we may never know how exactly RESET violated the Hines patent.