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A former top executive at networking giant Cisco Systems, Nuti was successful in weeding out the bad performance issues and harvesting the good. In less than a year, the company's revenue rose to US$1.3 billion, up 13 percent from the year before. Operating costs were also slashed by US$15.5 million.
Nuti also refreshed the company's entire product line, steering Symbol towards new areas like RFID (radio frequency identification).
In a recent interview with CNETAsia, Nuti spoke on several areas, including intellectual property rights and privacy issues concerning RFID.
Q. You recently filed a second patent infringement lawsuit against Intermec, relating to some of Symbol's patents. Can you give us an update, and how are your customers affected?
A. No customer will be affected whatsoever. A lot of attention has been paid to it more than we anticipated. It's simply a matter of us protecting our intellectual property in the market that we have worked so hard for.
We have 875 patents that we've developed over the last 30 years and where we've spent an incredible amount of money. The two areas where we are launching suits against Intermec are wireless and 2D barcodes. We think we have an excellent case in those areas.
How do you view the fact that some businesses have abused intellectual property for their economic benefit against the greater good of society?
As the CEO of a company which has invested so much in intellectual property, it's disturbing for me to see another business in the market act with the lack of integrity or ethics that I would expect the global business landscape to live up to.
Do you agree that software patents are accorded way too easily?
I think just like hardware, software patents are equally important in the market. The buzz around Microsoft spending a lot of money developing their software and their patent infrastructure has to be respected from a global perspective.
But on the flipside, I also believe that you have to offer reasonable and non-discriminatory license terms for companies to use that software or hardware.
It is Symbol's goal to lead in the RFID industry. What is the company's position so far? Right now, I would characterize Symbol as the leader in RFID technology for the supply chain industry, as well as travel and transportation. Clearly, there is a large RFID market that we don't participate in--the active tag market. We [therefore] can't characterize Symbol as the leader in RFID in the general sense.
Technology is always a double-edged sword. RFID, while useful to businesses in streamlining logistics, is considered a bane of privacy. Any thoughts?
I actually think that a lot of education needs to be done on a worldwide basis with regards to RFID, because an RFID tag is nothing more than a talking barcode. It's a serial number identifier that's transmitted, and nothing more than that.
So, there isn't any risk of a privacy breach when all you're receiving is a unique identifier, like a license plate number. And when I receive that data, I need to match it to a database to give me more information about what that means. And RFID tags don't have any power--they have to be powered by a device in a specific range.
The key issue is one of education. When people understand how the technology works, they will no longer have a concern for privacy.
Are privacy advocates against RFID technology really blowing things out of proportion?
Absolutely, there's no doubt about it. And it's because they don't understand the technology. Once you understand the technology, I think they will quickly back off the concerns that they have. It's up to us to educate them. I spend a good amount of time educating world leaders in Washington DC and around the world on RFID, the technology and why there shouldn’t be any concern with privacy.
Do you get threats from them?
No, I haven't directly received any letters or threats. In the 1970s, people were concerned about the same privacy issue with barcodes. And of course once people understand the technology, their concerns went away. The same will happen to RFID.
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