Company overview. Mobile Tech, Inc., which does business as Mobile Technologies Inc. and MTI (formerly Merchandising Technologies Inc.), is a private retail-technology company headquartered at 1050 NW 229th Ave, Hillsboro, Oregon, with additional offices in London, Hong Kong, and Ireland. It was founded in 1979 (CB Insights). MTI is privately held: Hammond, Kennedy, Whitney & Company (HKW) owned it from 2013, then sold it to middle-market private equity firm Vestar Capital Partners in August 2016, with management retaining a stake. Vestar's portfolio listing describes MTI as a global retail merchandising and services provider. Specific employee counts and revenue figures are not disclosed in the public sources reviewed.
Products / operations. MTI is an operating company, not a patent-assertion entity. It designs, assembles, and distributes retail loss-prevention and merchandising systems that secure, power, and display mobile consumer electronics — phones, tablets, wearables, cameras, and laptops — in retail stores and enterprise settings. Product lines include the Freedom platform (Freedom Micro II, Freedom Core II/FlexSensor, Freedom Focus), the Versa Key RFID access-control system, SmartTether/CarbonTether cabling, and the MTI Connect cloud/IoT platform for remote lockdown and device monitoring. Its ArmorActive brand supplies tablet enclosures and kiosk mounts. It also offers global installation, preventive maintenance, and break-fix field services, and states it holds nearly 80 patents.
Patent-litigation posture. MTI appears in the tracked data as a defendant only (0 plaintiff, 1 defendant cases), consistent with an operating company defending its products. The single tracked matter, InVue Security Products Inc. v. Mobile Tech, Inc., was filed 2016-07-19 in the Western District of North Carolina, Charlotte Division — notable because the plaintiff's home venue is North Carolina, not a plaintiff-friendly Texas district, and the case was transferred to the District of Oregon (Portland) in August 2017.
Case context. InVue, a competing retail-security vendor, asserted "Programmable Security System and Method for Protecting Merchandise" patents (U.S. 9,269,247; 9,135,800; 8,884,762), prompting MTI to file motions challenging subject-matter eligibility under Alice and to petition for inter partes review. PTAB proceedings and a Federal Circuit appeal (2018-1889/1898, nonprecedential Rule 36 judgment, March 2019) followed. Stanford's NPE Litigation Database records MTI later asserting its own patents against InVue in W.D.N.C. in 2018, indicating two-way litigation rather than pure defense.