Crestron seeks a declaratory judgment that five models of...

said in a countersuit against RGB filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The patent at issue (8,740,127) was granted to RGB on June 3 this year, and describes a cable retractor as being composed of “an articulate housing” that contains “a cable stop housing pivotably coupled to a pulley housing.” RGB waited only 10 days after landing the patent to use it as its basis for an infringement complaint against Crestron in federal court. Crestron also seeks to have the patent declared invalid on the grounds that it violates at least four sections of federal patent law, citing, for example, and without explanation, prior art in a patent (4,935,155) issued June 19, 1990, to inventor Walter Steiner. The Steiner invention describes a pulley-based clothes drying apparatus “with a central post member, a collar member axially displaceably mounted on the supporting post member and a plurality of support arms.” Key wording in the patent that may have bearing on a cable retractor patent dispute describes “the possibility to dry a few pieces of clothing only without the need of putting the entire apparatus into its operative position.” To do so, “a supply of a second clothes line may be pulled out from the apparatus and fixed at a distantly located anchoring member,” the patent says. “Upon releasing the end of the second clothes line, it is automatically drawn back.” Crestron and RGB representatives didn’t immediately comment.