Starbucks and ADT are having a potentially expensive tiff over what "proprietary" means in the world of security alarms.
A reminder to us all to be very careful when we put together contracts with our customers.
Dueling lawsuits filed this past week detail the rupture of a decadelong relationship during which ADT Security Services installed alarm systems at more than 2,400 of Starbucks' 7,257 company-owned U.S. stores.
Starbucks tried switching some locations to another monitoring company in 2005, only to discover that many had ADT-installed security chips that won't allow anyone else to reprogram the alarms remotely.
With a shifting roster of employees and frequent after-hours deliveries, Starbucks says it needs the flexibility to update the systems remotely. It claims that ADT and a predecessor firm consistently said they were installing alarms that were not proprietary.
I get the impression Starbucks had evolving needs that for one or more reasons were not being met under their contract with ADT.
That one of the driving factors was a desire to be able to manage the system remotely comes as no surprise, because our customers rely on that ability when it comes to their video surveillance systems.
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