Crestron clashes with Aurora over ‘inflammatory’ emails

Creston has accused Aurora Multimedia of trademark infringement and making misleading statements in a cease-and-desist letter.

Crestron was responding to marketing emails from Aurora in which the smaller company compared the availability and features of its own products to Crestron’s market-leading DM NVX range.

Aurora began its Crestron-focused campaign in August, with an email bearing the subject line “The solution for Crestron NVX lead time issues”. The email included a tabulated comparison of Aurora VPX and Crestron DM NVX features.

A similar marketing approach has also been adopted by Purelink with a “PureLink replacements for Crestron DM, DMPS, and NVX” email this month which suggested replacements without the feature comparison tables.

Yesterday, Aurora brought the Crestron cease-and-desist letter into the public domain with a new email campaign of its own, bearing the subject line “Aurora CEO Rebuts Crestron’s Cease and Desist”.

In a statement issued yesterday, Crestron EVP of global marketing Brad Hintze commented: “Aurora Multimedia issued a rather staged email today; we’d like to clarify. Crestron sent Aurora a trademark infringement and misleading statements cease and desist request. Though we appreciate Aurora’s flair for the dramatic, we must continually police and defend the use of our trademarks or we risk losing them. This kind of action is quite typical for businesses with valuable trademarks.”

Hintze added: “There were a lot of paths Aurora could have chosen to address this matter, including responding professionally as an industry peer. Instead, Aurora chose to send a widespread inflammatory email, so this is how we got here. As noted in our town halls, dealers looking to integrate competitive products, including Aurora, into their Crestron systems can use Crestron Design Services. Crestron’s main priority is serving our customers at a time when they need us most, and that is where we will continue to focus our efforts.”

Yesterday’s email campaign from Aurora includes a point-by-point response from Aurora CEO and CTO Paul Harris to allegations made in the Crestron cease-and-desist letter. However, the cease-and-desist letter itself has not been published.

Pointing to Aurora’s online videos which deal with previous claims that are said to have been made by Crestron, Harris added: “I know this may come as a shock, but Crestron has been making false and misleading accusations about Aurora for years. We usually just make fun of it and move on.”

He added: “Aurora’s intent in the (original) email newsletter was to call out a solution to a known problem in the industry and to show the differences in our product vs Crestron’s to assist when making a decision to make a change. We strongly believe in partnerships, not just with our dealers but with everyone. At the end of the day, if the project prevails everyone wins.”