TRA Requests Trade Secret Ruling

Despite a New York court's rejection of TRA's attempt to block the roll-out of Kantar's RapidView solution on the grounds of patent infringement, TRA has asked the courts to consider a further claim that WPP/Kantar 'improperly used' its trade secrets during development of the tool.

Back in July, TRA investor WPP filed a lawsuit against the media measurement specialist, over allegations that WPP-owned Kantar had 'ripped off' the Media TRAnalyics TV audience/shopping data matching solution in the development of its own RapidView product. TRA said this infringed its patent entitled 'Analyzing Return on Investment of Advertising Campaigns by Matching Multiple Data Sources'.

However, last week, the Federal Court in Manhattan denied TRA's motion for preliminary injunction, stating that an earlier Kantar TV audience/shopping data system was developed in 2005 before TRA started trading.

Separate from the patent infringement case, TRA says the court has yet to consider its claims that WPP and Kantar business units 'improperly used' any of the hundreds of confidentially disclosed TRA trade secret documents during the time that WPP/Kantar was developing RapidView.

TRA Chairman and CEO Mark Lieberman comments: 'TRA's innovations have distanced our software technology from the competition by matching multiple large data sources to produce a more complete media planning and selling solution as well as ROI metrics, all based on actual purchaser behavior. This is a solution we pioneered and one that was publicly lauded by senior executives at WPP when they invested in TRA.'

Web sites: www.traglobal.com , www.wpp.com and www.kantarmedia-audiences.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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