DailyDOOH

Gail Chiasson, North American Editor

Four Winds Interactive LLC, Denver, Colorado, has filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court in Colorado against 22 MILES, a Silicon Valley-based company, for Patent Infringement, Copyright Infringement, Unjust Enrichment, Unfair Competition, and Patent False Marking.

FWI has also requested an immediate source code review of 22 MILES’ software and expedited discovery.

FWI, founded in 2005 and now an established major player in visual communications software with more than 5,000 customers worldwide, first became concerned about 22 MILES when, it alleges, it became clear that 22 MILES wayfinding solution likely infringed upon a patent FWI had obtained two years earlier.

In looking further at 22 MILES history, FWI has learned that 22 MILES has been involved in two other lawsuits involving claims of unlawful competition. (One of these was filed by Morrow Technologies which operates as Janus Displays. And one of 22 MILES supposed former employees was involved in a suit involving PQ Labs.)

FWI also claims that 22 MILES evolution and product offerings as a Company since 2008, as well as the specific technology it claimed to own, seemed inconsistent with what would otherwise be feasible.

22 MILES is a California corporation co-founded in 2007 by Joey Yu Zhao as a website development company, although in a previous lawsuit, it identified itself as a HR company.

According to FWI’s information, in Feb./09, 22 MILES, acting in the capacity of an HR placement company, placed Chinese citizen Yang Qi as an independent contractor with a software company in California that owns and sells touch screen technology called PQ Labs Inc.. (There is no record, other than this, of 22 Miles acting as a HR firm.) In the PQ Labs case ruling, the Court noted that Yang Qi was referred to as the ‘master of copying’ or ‘master of reverse-engineering’.

In 2010, Yang Qi was terminated from PQ labs in 2010, accused of stealing proprietary information from PQ Labs, and subsequently started his own competing company, Zaagtech, which sells multi touch technology. The same year, 22 MILES began marketing and selling ‘proprietary multi touch technology’.

In 2012, PQ Labs filed suit in federal court in California against Yang Qi, Zaagtech and other defendants. The California federal court ultimately found that Yang Qi misappropriated PQ Labs trade secrets, targeted its customers, reversed engineered its software, and removed over 60% of PQ Labs market share. Yang Qi and the other defendants were ordered to pay monetary damages and were permanently enjoined.

In late 2012, when PQ Labs first initiated its lawsuit against Yang Qi, 22 MILES began to market itself as a digital signage software provider.

In July, 2013, at the Hospitality Technology Trade Show, 22 MILES displayed its digital signage technology in a trade show booth run by ‘Tommy Mann’. Tomer Mann was previously an employee of Janus and from 2011 through 2013 was acting as an independent contractor of Janus Displays selling Janus displays digital signage software.

In 2015, Janus Displays filed suit in state court in Florida against 22 MILES and Tommy Mann (a/k/a Tomer Mann; a/k/a Tomer Gazar) for unlawful competition, a case that is still pending. This individual is the president and owner of Tech Alliance Consulting.

In 2015, 22 MILES announced a full suite of visual communications software products, maintaining, on its website, that it has ‘patented digital technology’. FWI says that no record has been located of 22 MILES owning any issued or pending US patents. Further, FWI was surprised when, late in 2015, it began seeing 22 MILES appearing at conferences and customer pitches, offering what it was referring to as a special ‘FWI Discount’.

Further, it was found that 22 MILES has a copy of FWI’s software. FWI did not license, and has not at any time licensed any of its software to 22 MILES. FWI points out in detail in its suit that the various similaririties of 22 MILES’ software technology cannot be explained by coincidence, and notes that 22 MILES began competing overnight with FWI technologies developed over a decade.

The suit notes that 22 MILES appears to have won business from companies for which FWI directly competed. Upon information and belief, this lost business equates to hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue, at a minimum. Moreover, the damage to FWI’s reputation and lost market share, in part due to the ‘FWI Discount’ offering is likely incalculable.

This going to be a most interesting case to follow!

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 31st, 2016 at 20:23 @891 and is filed under DailyDOOH Update. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.