Krown does not have patents. Ralph Krongold (former Krown CEO which his
company named after his last name) had a very dumb patent attorney who told
him that his design of putting a keyboard, display, and coupler in a single
was not patentable. He believed him. Not until Ultratec stepped into the
TTY marketing, he was so pissed off with his attorney because Ultratec had
the similarities of Krown's models. Ultratec has been and still is the
leader of TTY marketing. His biggest loss and sold his biz to Sid for an
undisclosed sum.
Unfortunately, all TTY manufacturers have noticed a steady decline of TTY
sales due to ever-popular SK which it comes with TTY features for almost
the same price of buying a TTY. I talked with deafworks
(
www.deafworks.com) on the other day about their low-cost TTY (the
lowest cost of all TTYs in today's market). Deafworks knew that their TTY
sales is going downward in the next couple of years or even sooner so they
already prepared for additional videophone accessories such as flasher,
switcher, ans mach, etc to meet ever demanding today's marketing
needs. So, DHB is right about the 95% TTY sales is lost.