AMS Files for Declaratory Judgment against eTAGZ’s Patents

On Tuesday, November 20, 2012, AMS (plaintiff) filed a complaint for declaratory judgment of non-infringement and patent invalidity against eTAGZ (defendant) in the U.S. District Court of Winconsin (case no. 3:12-cv-00843).

AMS is engaged in the business of manufacturing and selling bow fishing equipment. eTAGZ is involved in digital shopping marketing initiatives for manufacturers, retailers and content providers to drive merchandise sales and capture new consumers.

The patents involved in this are suit are owned by the defendant eTAGZ and are listed below:

Patent Number Current Assignee[i]	Issue Date	Expiration Date[ii]	Title
US6298332 eTAGZ	Oct 02, 2001	May 06, 2019	CD-ROM product label apparatus and method
US7503502 eTAGZ	Mar 17, 2009	May 06, 2019	Computer readable hang tag and product
US7703686 eTAGZ	Apr 27, 2010	May 06, 2019	Consumer-computer-readable product label apparatus and method

Note: Table information sourced from MaxVal’s Assignment Database.

As per the complaint, around September 7, 2012, AMS received a letter from eTAGZ stating that their products including a fishing product with a DVD package utilize the inventions embodied in the ‘332, ‘502, ‘686 patents. All these patents relate to a CD-ROM product label apparatus and method. AMS alleges that fishing product with a DVD package does not meet the interpreted limitations of any claim in the above patents and therefore does not infringe them. The declaratory judgment complaint further seeks a ruling that the above 3 patents are invalid. 

Fig.1 Reel Bowfishing DVD

AMS has filed a patent infringement suit on Allen Company and the details are as follows:

Case Number	Date Filed	Status
3:11-cv-00154	03/01/2011	Open

If you are interested in knowing more about the above case, please contact us.

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[i] MaxVal offers Patent Assignment Alert service where subscribers receive email alerts when assignments relating to target applications, patents or entities of interest are recorded.

[ii] Expected expiration date.  Patent Term Estimator is a free web-based tool that automatically calculates patent terms and expiration dates for U.S. utility patents.