UK Innovations Group Ltd has ceased trading

A statement from the founder

Today I am announcing the closure of UK Innovations Group Ltd. It is an incredibly difficult announcement to make.

Before anything else I want to speak directly to our customers. If you have an eControl system installed in your home, please be reassured — we are not disappearing. We are establishing a dedicated platform at www.systemtechnical.co.uk where existing customers can access spare parts and technical support. The ongoing availability of parts and support for installed systems is extremely important to us and we will do everything we can.

From a very modest start, we grew into a multimillion pound business with national recognition, manufacturing thousands of control systems for installations across the United Kingdom. Not a week goes by where I don’t receive feedback from customers telling me we changed the way they live. That will stay with me forever.

As is commonly known, we were taken to court. Three years of intensive litigation followed. We won on the substantial majority of claims and the final judgment was unequivocal — our products are "unobjectionable in the eyes of the law". It was the battle of a lifetime.

We lost on one historic trademark point — not enough for us to recover our costs. Legal and associated costs in excess of £700,000, frozen revenue streams throughout the litigation period and the insolvency of a key trade customer leaving substantial unpaid obligations combined to create a position that has proved impossible to sustain.

We are not closing because our products infringe anything. We are closing because of the cost of the fight.

What is perhaps less well understood is that the most prominent trademark claim we successfully defended had implications far beyond our own business. Had it succeeded it would have set a precedent affecting the entire renovated and converted range cooker market — including some of our loudest critics. We funded that defence alone. We simply note it and leave others to reflect on it.

We are nevertheless enormously proud of how we stood up to that fight — successfully defending the claims brought against us across two trials at the IPEC and the Court of Appeal at the Royal Courts of Justice.

I want to acknowledge honestly that in more recent months, as the weight of this situation became impossible to sustain, some customers experienced delays and difficulties that fell below the standard we had always set ourselves. Operating a complex electronics business under the sustained financial strain of three years of litigation is extraordinarily difficult. That was never a reflection of our values or our commitment to them and I apologise for it.

We have instructed a licensed insolvency practitioner to assist with the formal winding down of the company. We will not be responding to questions in public forums. Please visit www.systemtechnical.co.uk where you can submit your query. We aim to have this in operation within two weeks.

To our customers, installers, trade partners and everyone who believed in what we were trying to do — thank you.

Your support has been the foundation of everything.

This chapter is closing. The journey is far from over.

Michael McGinley
Founder, UK Innovations Group Ltd