Best Lock Corporation

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Best Lock Corporation
Type Private
Founded 1925
Headquarters Indianapolis,IN, USA
Key people Frank E Best, Founder
Industry lock manufacturer
Website www.bestaccess.com

Best Lock Corporation is a door hardware and lock manufacturer founded in 1925 by Frank E. Best in Seattle, Washington as Best Universal Lock Company. It relocated to Indianapolis, IN in 1938 and is there currently.

It specializes in small format interchangeable core locks invented by Best himself in 1921. It became Best Lock Corporation in 1995 and on November 25th, 2002, it was acquired by Stanley Works.

It is now the Stanley Security Solutions, Best Lock Corporation d/b/a Best Access Systems.

Best's product lines include SFIC locks and door knobs, padlocks, etc to go with them. It's known for only selling directly to corporate and institutional end users without going through locksmiths. Its products are typically installed into moderate to large master keyed systems.

Best SFIC locks come in many keyways since they're usually meant for users with large master key systems.

From tens of keyways it offers, one product line known as Premium Key System is a series of key system with using keyway profiles wider than their common blanks. Best held patents on the overall shape of these keys. Ilco-Unican Corporation (now Kaba-Ilco) felt the patents were not valid and made compatible blanks and distributed them in 1993 ALOA convention.

Best sued Ilco claiming patents infringements over their design and utility patents, however Ilco counterclaimed that its patents were not valid. In August 1996, court decided that both patents were invalid on basis that its utility patent was already covered in a prior art and that keyway shape was not an ornamental concern for the users.[1]

Its current offerings are:
traditional SFIC
Older Best blanks were factory incised with lettering "IT IS UNLAWFUL TO DUPLICATE THIS KEY" but their current blanks are instead stamped "DUPLICATION PROHIBITED".

PEAKS
utilizing KABA Peaks patented technology

MX8
This is its newest key system with a patented side pin technology (Patent number 5,615,566 (expiration date: 2015). This key system is available in the M series that is backward compatible with pre-existing traditional SFIC locks as well as the X series that is not. [2]

[edit] Sources

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.ll.georgetown.edu/federal/judicial/fed/opinions/95opinions/95-1528.html 95-1528 Best Lock Corp. v. Ilco Unican Corp
  2. ^ http://www.bestaccess.com/index.asp?Mode=MX8 Best Official MX8 series page