New York August 29, 2001 PartMiner, which supplies electronic components and content and technology services to the electronics industry, has won an intellectual property rights lawsuit it brought against Manufacturing Technology Inc. (MTI) of Fort Walton Beach, Fla. The suit concerned unauthorized use of PartMiner's component database, currently known as PartMiner CAPS iContent.
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York found MTI to be in violation of a 1998 agreement with IHS Group, a co-plaintiff in the suit with PartMiner, by refusing to return CAPSXpert component information that was incorporated into its Total Parts Plus database and by making that information available to third parties. The Court issued a permanent injunction against MTI, in which the Court, among other things, ordered MTI to delete and destroy component information on over 1.8 million part numbers incorporated into its Total Parts Plus database.
In March 2001, Total Parts Plus, a wholly owned subsidiary of MTI, and Need2Buy announced a partnership in which Total Parts Plus would supply Need2Buy with component information. The Court also ordered Need2Buy to delete and destroy any of PartMiner's component information that it may have received from MTI.
"This is a huge victory for PartMiner," said Michael Manley, PartMiner's executive vice president and general counsel. "The component information in our database represents a valuable intellectual property asset that we will continue to defend vigorously."
PartMiner purchased the CAPSXpert database from IHS Group in December 1999. The database has since grown to include contain component information from some 2,000 manufacturers on 15 million part numbers, including semiconductors, batteries, fuses, power supplies, relays and transformers.
