TROY, Mich. -- ArvinMeritor, ZF Friedrichshafen AG, and ZF Meritor have won a patent infringement suit brought by Eaton Corp. on the ZF FreedomLine transmission.

The suit, initially filed in late 2003, was heard before a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.

Eaton originally asserted that the FreedomLine heavy duty automated mechanical transmission infringed 11 different Eaton patents.

This time the jury found that both technology patents at issue in the trial were invalid and therefore not enforceable against ArvinMeritor, Inc, ZF Friedrichshafen AG or ZF Meritor LLC on both current and future products.

"This is a significant milestone for ArvinMeritor and ZF's FreedomLine transmission product line and its superior technology, particularly since we've been confident the product didn't infringe from the beginning," said Carsten Reinhardt, president of ArvinMeritor's Commercial Vehicle Systems business.

ZF FreedomLine

"ZF takes great pride in its innovative products. This suit was an attempt by Eaton to limit the choice that truck manufacturers offer to end-users," said Rolf Lutz, group executive, Commercial Vehicle and Special Technology Division, ZF Friedrichshafen AG.

A spokesman for Eaton said the company is disappointed in the verdict and is considering its options for an appeal.

The FreedomLine transmission is an automated manual transmissions and was the first in the industry to feature a two-pedal design for use in the fleet market. The two-pedal design is significantly easier for the drivers to learn and use when compared to a traditional three-pedal system, the company says.

In January 2005, after a 10-day hearing, an administrative judge at the ITC ruled in favor of ZF and ArvinMeritor on all but one of the asserted claims. In response, ZF engineers redesigned the FreedomLine system in compliance with the ITC's decision and ZF continued to import the redesigned transmissions.

Eaton subsequently filed an enforcement proceeding at the ITC, asserting that the redesigned FreedomLine system still infringed and seeking penalties in excess of $40 million. The ITC ultimately found that there was no continuing infringement and denied Eaton's request for penalties.

This was not the first time Eaton and Meritor ended up in court over transmission patents. Just eight months before this lawsuit was filed, ArvinMeritor announced it had won its appeal of another patent infringement suit brought by Eaton against ZF Meritor's Engine Synchro Shift· (ESS) transmission system. In that lawsuit, initially filed in 1997, ZF Meritor was forced in September 2001 to remove ESS from the market, following the initial verdict in the competitor's favor.

-- via Truckinginfo.com