Louisiana-based PacTec Inc., a maker of industrial containment bags used at both Energy Department and commercial nuclear cleanup sites, claims in a new federal lawsuit that another company is violating its patents.
PacTec claims Pennsylvania-based ICE Service Group and two Tennessee-based affiliates, ICE Packaging, and Strategic Packaging, are “making, using, offering for sale, selling, or importing containment bags embodying PacTec’s patented apparatuses and methods.”
The defendants have done so with “full knowledge” of PacTec’s patent rights, and the infractions have been “willful and deliberate,” the company said in its June 1 complaint in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee. PacTec has requested a jury trial and monetary damages and seeks to have ICE enjoined from further patent infractions.
PacTec said it discovered evidence of the alleged violations by the defendants between 2016 and 2018 at sites including DOE’s Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee and Separations Process Research Unit in upstate New York, along with a Perma-Fix Environmental Services waste treatment site in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
An ICE employee, reached by telephone Tuesday afternoon, said he would have the company’s general counsel respond to a press inquiry about the litigation. The general counsel did not respond by press time.
The bags in question are formed of polymeric fibers. They are meant to fit large containers like roll-off dumpsters or dump trailers. They also have “closeable openings” or a “sling system for lifting the filed bag” with cranes or similar machinery. On its website, PacTec said its products help clients collect, package, and dispose of wastes including soil, gravel and debris from demolition.
PacTec is filing the suit in order to enforce its patent rights, attorney John G. Jackson said in an emailed statement in which he reiterated key points of the complaint. “PacTec otherwise declines to provide any further comment on the ongoing litigation.”
