Mobile Tech, Inc., d/b/a Mobile Technologies Inc. (MTI) — formerly Merchandising Technologies, Inc. — is a privately held manufacturer headquartered in Hillsboro, Oregon (1050 NE 67th Ave). Sources differ on founding year (PitchBook: 1977; CB Insights: 1979; company materials cite "over 45 years" as of 2023). It is not publicly traded. It was a portfolio company of Hammond, Kennedy, Whitney & Company from 2013 until August 2016, when Vestar Capital Partners acquired it in partnership with management; Vestar is a New York middle-market PE firm. PitchBook lists roughly 900 employees and a May 2024 acquisition, but MTI does not publish revenue or headcount, and that 2024 transaction could not be verified from a primary source.
MTI supplies retail merchandising security and device-management hardware and software. Its three long-standing segments are Retail Merchandising (display stands, pucks, tethers and alarming power cords used to secure and charge phones, tablets and wearables on retail floors — e.g., the Freedom Micro line), ArmorActive (tablet and smartphone enclosures and kiosks for enterprise deployments, acquired 2014), and Global Services (installation, preventive maintenance, break-fix field service and contact-center support, with offices in North America, Hong Kong and a service center in Drogheda, Ireland). It also sells smart locks, RFID access keys (Versa Key) and the MTI Connect cloud/IoT platform. MTI's own marketing cites nearly 80 patents; customers have included large U.S. retailers and mobile carriers.
Patent-litigation posture: MTI is an operating company, not a non-practicing entity. Our tracked data shows zero cases as plaintiff and one as defendant. That single case was brought by a direct competitor asserting its own patents, which is the classic operating-company-versus-operating-company profile rather than NPE assertion.
Notable case: InVue Security Products Inc. v. Mobile Tech, Inc., filed 2018-08-28 in the Southern District of Indiana and transferred to the District of Oregon. InVue, a competing retail-security manufacturer, asserted U.S. Patent Nos. 9,830,787 and 10,055,954 ("Merchandise Security System Including Retractable Alarming Power Cord") against MTI's Freedom Micro products. Public dockets also show related InVue–MTI suits in the Western District of North Carolina and Oregon between 2015 and 2019, and MTI filed inter partes review petitions challenging InVue patents; the structured case list above reflects only the tracked 2018 matter.