Contrary to erroneous published reports claiming Infogroup has lost its federal lawsuit against DatabaseUSA and its affiliated companies, the case will head to discovery phase and jury trial now that a judge has issued preliminary rulings.
A District Judge denied Infogroup’s motion for preliminary injunction on March 30, but the court also explained in a 33-page opinion that the ruling “does not mean this case is over.” In its publicly-filed lawsuit, Infogroup asserts that DatabaseUSA, InfoFree and AtoZdatabases – companies owned by former Infogroup CEO Vinod Gupta – improperly acquired information from Infogroup’s proprietary database, infringed Infogroup’s copyrights, engaged in false advertising, and falsely represented a relationship between Gupta and Infogroup that confused customers.
Although the case remains in its early stages in federal district court in Nebraska, an April 9 news release on marketwired.com listing Infofree.com as the source erroneously reported that Infogroup lost the lawsuit. The release appears to be based on an inaccurate article that appeared the day prior in the Indian American Times, which lists Vinod Gupta as its publisher. Indian American Times was unavailable for comment and is yet to issue a retraction of the article.
While the District Judge denied Infogroup’s preliminary motion, he warned Gupta’s company, DatabaseUSA, against misrepresenting itself and making misleading statements about Gupta’s former relationship with Infogroup – saying “DatabaseUSA would be well advised to knock it off.”
Earlier this month the press reported that a Federal Judge Denies Infogroup®, InfoUSA®, SalesGenie®, and ReferenceUSA® in Their Request for Preliminary Injunction Against DatabaseUSA, Infofree.com, and AtoZdatabases
Infogroup® tried to bully its founder and former CEO Vin Gupta by bringing a frivolous lawsuit against his new companies, DatabaseUSA, Infofree.com, and AtoZdatabases, as reported by the Indian American Times. However, John M. Gerrard, United States District Judge, ruled against Infogroup on all counts. Judge Gerrard in his judgement noted, “Infogroup’s various motions are denied,” as the court documents went into details rebutting Infogroup’s allegations.
In the court document the judgment says, “The information in Infogroup’s database is not wholly unavailable to the world at large — to begin with, while some data may come from private sources or Infogroup’s own information-gathering, a substantial amount of the data is compiled from publicly-available sources.” Countering the evidence being submitted by Infogroup, the Court said, “DatabaseUSA’s evidence also casts substantial doubt on whether any of the individual employee defendants could have obtained the data at issue. Three of the five individual defendants were terminated by Infogroup before the November 2011 seed data was inserted into the Infogroup database.”
The full court document can be accessed here.
Source: Businesswire.com
