Roxio, Inc. announced that it has responded to the lawsuit filed by Gracenote, Inc. on May 10, 2001 and filed a number of additional counterclaims. Roxio alleges that Gracenote fraudulently obtained its ‘680 patent and its CDDB trademark by failing to disclose certain key information to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
The counterclaims filed by Roxio also include antitrust claims based on Gracenote’s alleged misuse of the ‘680 patent and breach of contract claims based upon Gracenote’s termination of service to Roxio’s end users.
On May 17, 2001, Gracenote filed a motion for a temporary restraining order seeking to block Roxio from shipping certain of its products. On May 24, 2001, the Court denied Gracenote’s request finding that Gracenote failed to demonstrate a likelihood of success on the merits.
“Gracenote sought to obtain patent rights to publicly released software without informing the U.S. Patent Office of the prior art, sought to trademark a generic acronym (CDDB) by misleading the U.S. Trademark Office and sought to obtain copyright protection for the work of the CDDB contributors,” said Bill Growney, Director of Legal Affairs at Roxio, Inc.
“Having built its database by promising the public that the database was to be freely accessible, Gracenote is now attempting to misappropriate and monopolize access to public information, and seeks to impose supracompetitive pricing for that access.”