Kantar Asks Judge to Dismiss TRA Infringement Claim

WPP insight arm Kantar has filed a request in the US District Court in Manhattan to dismiss patent infringement claims made by media measurement firm TRA before they go to tribunal.

The case kicked off in 2011, when TRA investor WPP filed a lawsuit against TRA over the latter's allegations that WPP-owned Kantar had 'ripped off' its MediaTRAnalytics TV audience/shopping data matching solution while developing its own RapidView product, just a few months after talks between the firms regarding a potential purchase of TRA by WPP broke down.

US District Judge Shira Scheindlin ('Judge Judy') ordered the firms to enter mediation talks before proceeding to trial, but these discussions broke down and the case continued. Later that year, the judge found that Kantar had developed its own technology in 2005, before TRA started trading, but gave TRA time to come up with counter information.

In a filing submitted last week, WPP claimed that after two years, TRA has still not been able to come up with any evidence to justify continuation of the case, while continuing to maintain that its RapidView product had been developed on the back of a 'single source' product produced in the UK before TRA was founded.

TRA - which is now owned by digital video recorder solutions provider TiVo - has not yet replied to the request to dismiss the case.