The claim by Stahl that it has teamed up with HBC to design an innovative control concept may well be true as far as HBC are concerned but this feature and technology already exists in the public domain as the concept was created and developed by Commander Controls Limited and was quoted and sold to clients as early as 01-12-1992, some 14 years before Stahl have apparently created it as well. This product feature is still being quoted and sold to clients in other world markets.
We have in fact quoted this technology for a specific multi crane application with track switching feature direct to Stahl on 22nd October 1996 and this document incorporated a very specific copyright design and intellectual property clause.
Preceding this and at the request of Stahl on 04th May 1995, we contacted one of their clients to discuss the technology on their behalf for a project. Since then other systems have been quoted and installed both in the UK and overseas for several clients.
Our original name for this product was Simplex Retransmission. This name is as it implies a system that can retransmit data communication and commands from one piece of hardware to another or to more than one.
Nowadays of course we have more advanced microprocessors which can multi-task, so such data can be bi-directional. We have in the past 24 months used a trade mark name for the technology called XBData. However, the actual methodology and practicality of the system remains the same. We can supply the system using Radio or Infra-Red or a combination of both to suit the application and/or environment.
Commander engineers have been innovators of remote control technology and collision avoidance systems since the mid sixties and many of the features created and developed have been adopted by several manufacturers.
Yours sincerely,
Bill Wood
Managing Director
Commander Controls Limited
