MDC-1200 - Patent and Manufacturers

Patent and Manufacturers

MDC-1200 is patented under US patents 4,457,005 4,517,561 4,590,473 and 4,517,669. During the patent period, Motorola charged heavy licensing fees for the MDC-1200 protocol. As a result, few other manufacturers produced equipment compatible with the system. This tended to produce a lock-in situation where many companies and public safety agencies were restricted to using mostly Motorola radios, in order to ensure compatibility with existing systems.

Manufacturers of third-party MDC-1200 hardware, including in-radio encoder/decoder modules (as aftermarket add-ons for non-Motorola radios), display units for dispatch centers, etc. include Midian Electronics, Control Signal Corporation and Cimarron Technologies. Some of these products have display screens, some are 'black boxes' with inputs for power and receiver audio, and an RS232 serial data output.

As of February 2008, there is some discussion as to the status of the above mentioned patents. While the USPTO still shows them as active patents, a number of other radio manufacturers have begun including MDC-1200 support in their products. Vertex Standard manufactures OEM add-on boards for their mobile and portable Land Mobile Radios that support MDC-1200 ANI (or PTT ID). Icom Incorporated includes built-in MDC-1200 features on some of their newer radios including the IC-F3021/4021 portables and IC-F1721/1821 mobiles, as does Kenwood Electronics.