PowerTrunk clarifies status after being impacted by injunction against Hytera

TETRA manufacturer PowerTrunk has returned to business as usual after the bulk of its operations were shut down for about two weeks by an injunction against parent company Hytera—despite the fact that PowerTrunk does not sell DMR products that are at the heart of Hytera’s dispute with Motorola Solutions.

PowerTrunk CEO Jose Martin said being subject to the injunction—issued on April 2 and stayed on April 16 by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals—certainly was far from ideal, but he indicated that PowerTrunk as returned to “normal operations” and he does not believe the impact of the sales sanctions will be significantly negative for the company.

“Of course, nobody likes to be handcuffed for two weeks, but it has not been a major issue to us,” Martin said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “All shipments were put on hold. And we immediately put on hold marketing activities, and we put our website in maintenance mode. We did not submit any proposals to any customers. We did not attend any exhibitions.

“We did that for two weeks. That is not a major issue, [being inactive for] two weeks. Two months would have been more difficult, of course.”

New Jersey-based PowerTrunk—the leading TETRA provider in the U.S.—is the U.S. subsidiary of Teltronic, which was purchased by Hytera Communications as part of a deal for Sepura in December 2016. This relationship meant that PowerTrunk was subject to a U.S. federal district-court injunction that blocked Hytera and all subsidiaries and affiliates from selling two-way-radio products worldwide.

These contempt sanctions were part of a years-long dispute centered around Hytera Communications using stolen Motorola Solutions trade secrets and copyrighted software to develop its DMR products. PowerTrunk initially was a party to the lawsuit, but the TETRA company was dropped from the dispute relatively early in the litigation.

“The problem is that there are a few misunderstandings,” Martin said. “Some people believe that PowerTrunk is somehow involved in this lawsuit. That is categorically not true. We do not have anything to do with this dispute between Motorola Solutions and Hytera Communications. It is as simple as that.

“We have never infringed Motorola’s rights, yet we have been impacted by this injunction, because PowerTrunk is an indirect Hytera subsidiary. It isn’t that TETRA is included, it is because two-way-radio products [were deemed within] the scope of the injunction … I know that it’s hard to understand for many people—to understand why PowerTrunk is involved, why TETRA is impacted, if TETRA is not the subject of the lawsuit.”

Complicating matters further is that some in the marketplace have spread “misinformation about PowerTrunk, according to an April 17 press release from the company.

“This clarification is necessary in order to mitigate the impact of the misinformation spread by other parties, with the intention of undermining PowerTrunk’s reputation and business expectations,” Martin said in a prepared statement included in the press release.

With this in mind, PowerTrunk last week issued a press release that was designed to clarify the company’s position while noting that PowerTrunk’s 700/800 MHz TETRA-P25 subscribers are designated as grant-eligible by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In addition, PowerTrunk is authorized by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to sell products “to U.S. customers without restrictions, including federal agencies and customers receiving federal funds,” according to the press release.