A federal lawsuit has been filed by Progressive, the nation’s fourth largest auto insurer, against Liberty Mutual for a patent infringement on a vehicle monitoring system. Progressive claims Liberty’s OnBoard Adviser and Rewind programs are copyright infringements of Progressive’s MyRate program monitoring insured’s driving habits.

According to the lawsuit Progressive was issued a patent in 2000 for the MyRate program. This patent is being used as the grounds for lawsuit against Liberty’s Rewind and Onboard Adviser programs.  The Rewind program waives surcharges for qualifying drivers who receive a speeding ticket or are involved in an accident. The Onboard Advisor program is more intense as it reports your fuel score, indicates driver performance as to correct risky driving habits, keeps a location lock on the vehicle and creates a driver trend analysis. These systems are utilized by Liberty Mutual to transmit data used to calculate the driver’s safety score.

According to an article from Business Insurance a Progressive spokeswoman stated:

“Our extensive research, development and investment in usage-based insurance dates back to the mid-1990s. We filed this suit to protect intellectual property rights we have spent more than 15 years investing and developing.”

The Liberty Mutual Spokesman Gleen Greenberg has relayed to the press as of now the company has no comment on the litigation.