Mobile Tech, Inc. — commonly MTI, doing business as Mobile Technologies, Inc., and formerly Merchandising Technologies Inc. — is a privately held manufacturer headquartered at 1050 NE 67th Ave, Hillsboro, Oregon. It was founded in 1977 (some databases list 1979). It is private-equity backed: Vestar Capital Partners acquired it in August 2016 from Hammond, Kennedy, Whitney & Company (which had owned it since 2013); earlier investors included Endeavour Capital and Capitala Group. Size figures vary by source — PitchBook lists ~901 employees (2023) and Latka estimates ~848 employees and roughly $93M revenue, while other directories give much smaller counts; no audited figure is public.
Products / operations. MTI designs, assembles, and distributes retail loss-prevention and merchandising hardware and software for consumer-electronics retailers and brands. Product lines include Freedom Micro and Freedom Micro II HSC tethered alarm systems, Freedom smart locks and MTI Locks RFID cabinet/drawer locks, the Secure Plug merchandising power-and-alarm system, Versa Key/Versa ID electronic keys, and the MTI Connect IoT platform. Its ArmorActive division (acquired 2014) makes tablet enclosures, kiosks, and mounts (Pipeline, RapidDoc). MTI Global Services provides installation, preventive maintenance, and 24/7 contact-center field support in over 90 countries, with offices in London, Hong Kong, and Drogheda, Ireland.
Patent-litigation posture. MTI is an operating company, not an NPE: the tracked record shows one case as defendant and zero as plaintiff. The suit — InVue Security Products Inc. v. Mobile Tech, Inc., U.S. District Court, W.D.N.C. (Charlotte Division), filed 2017-05-22 — is a competitor dispute over programmable security-system patents (e.g., US 9,659,472). MTI contested venue; the court found W.D.N.C. proper based on six part-time field technicians but transferred and consolidated the action to the District of Oregon in August 2017.
Context. InVue is a Charlotte, North Carolina–based competitor. Public filings and court records indicate broader parallel disputes between the two firms (including counterclaims and IPR/PGR and ex parte reexamination proceedings), which are not reflected in the single tracked case record.