ICE Service Group on Monday denied patent infringement claims made in a lawsuit from a competitor, instead accusing the company of “brazen industrial espionage.”
Clinton, La.-based PacTec, which makes industrial containment bags used at government and commercial radioactive waste cleanup sites, filed its lawsuit in June in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee. PacTec claimed its Ambridge, Pa.-based rival and two affiliated companies willfully violated its patents for bags used to collect and ship gravel, soil, and debris from demolition. That includes employing PacTec technology for production of bags at one ICE plant in Tennessee, according to the lawsuit.
PacTec is seeking an injunction against ICE, stopping it from using the patents, and other damages. The defendants in the lawsuit are ICE Service Group; the separately owned ICE Packaging, based in Tennessee; and Strategic Packaging, which in July 2017 sold certain assets to ICE Packaging.
The formal response was filed on behalf of ICE Service Group and ICE Packaging Group by Pittsburgh-based attorney Henry Sneath. The two defendants are simply cited as ICE throughout the document.
In the response, the ICE companies denied infringing upon PacTec patents or causing others to do so. They said PacTec is not entitled to any injunction because it has not shown it has suffered any harm from alleged patent infringements.
The defendants also argue PacTec lacks the legal standing to sue over patent infringement because the plaintiff is no longer owner or sole owner of the patents, having used them as collateral with lenders. They are requesting the PacTec complaint be dismissed in its entirety.
The response specifically says a PacTec employee earlier this year impersonated an Energy Department official in order to glean ICE trade secrets and take photographs of its haulage bags. In spring 2018, ICE Service contracted with Waste Control Specialists to move hazardous and radioactive materials from the Department of Energy’s Separations Process Research Unit (SPRU) in New York state.
In May, ICE claimed, the PacTec employee went to the Port of Albany, N.Y., where the materials were being loaded, and presented credentials akin to DOE identification, in order to get access to look at the ICE shipment.
The PacTec employee proceeded to the work area and told an ICE employee he had received permission from Energy Department officials at SPRU to inspect the ICE containment bags and railcar loading process, according to the response.
The ICE employee at the site then sent a text message to company management to say a DOE official was on site inspecting the containment bags and taking photographs. Management subsequently asked the ICE employee for the name of presumed DOE official, who had already departed. ICE management “immediately recognized the name” as being a manager with PacTec, according to the legal filing.
ICE employees that same day notified SPRU cleanup contractor AECOM and a subcontractor “of the security breach at the Port of Albany site,” according to the legal brief. The PacTec manager said to have impersonated a DOE employee also canceled a meeting he had scheduled later that day with AECOM about waste hauling procurement.
“Soon, PacTec will file its response to the allegations and claims contained within the Counterclaims that were filed on Monday,” John Jackson, a Chattanooga, Tenn.-based attorney for PacTec, said by email Thursday afternoon.
The ICE filing indicated DOE was investigating the incident. The Energy Department did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation.
Both PacTec and ICE are subcontractors to Energy Department and nuclear plant decommissioning projects, assisting in collection and shipment of hazardous and radioactive materials.
PacTec’s website indicates the company’s projects include work for CH2M Hill in its demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state. It is also working with contaminated soil at Nevada National Security Site (NNSS).
The ICE Service Group website indicates it has a rail-to-truck transload facility in Kingman, Ariz., to support shipments moving from the various DOE sites to the NNSS.
