HardOCP Victorious in Legal Battle Against Infinium Labs
Infinium Labs abandoned its defense of accusations over a published report on KB’s HardOCP technology news website in late 2003, after a judge ruled Infinium had conceded the merits of the case. Infinium Pres. Kevin Bachus said Wed. his company “simply decided to walk away from the case.”
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HardOCP declared victory Tues., saying on the site that after spending “close to $200,000” since Feb. 2004 to fight Infinium and keep its report online “now maybe we can get our minds back” off the court battle and on to regular business.
Infinium, which still hasn’t launched its much-delayed Phantom Game Service, sued KB in Fla. last year, claiming that a report that HardOCP ran in Sept. 2003 defamed it and CEO Timothy Roberts. Infinium also accused KB of trademark infringement. But KB sued Infinium in Tex., requesting a declaratory judgment to get Infinium’s suit thrown out.
In a written ruling Mon. by U.S. Dist. Court Judge Jeff Kaplan, Dallas, he said that Infinium “filed an answer” to HardOCP’s declaratory judgment complaint, “admitting” that the report posted by HardOCP and later corrected in March 2004 “does not constitute unfair competition… or an unfair business practice, trade disparagement, trade libel and tortious interference” under Tex. law and that KB/HardOCP’s use of Infinium’s trademarks “does not constitute dilution of infringement of those marks or otherwise give rise to liability under federal or state law.” Kaplan also said that Infinium “admitted [KB/HardOCP was] entitled to declaratory relief.”
Kaplan added that “by virtue of [Infinium’s] admission, it appears that all matters in controversy have been resolved, except for the issue of attorney’s fees.” He ordered the companies to each submit an “agreed declaratory judgment” by Jan. 14 and said that if issues remained, the companies had until the same day to file papers on them.
But Bachus said Wed. that “we stand by our assertion that the ridiculous and inaccurate comments about Infinium” that were made by HardOCP “should have been pulled off the site long ago.” A spokeswoman for the company said that Infinium “did not admit or agree to anything; they just decided not to pursue [the case] further.” She said Kaplan’s use of the word “admit” was merely “standard ‘legal’ language.”
Bachus said: “We ultimately decided to drop our request. There is nothing for us to pursue now. The damage, at this point, has been done. When we launch the Phantom, everyone will be able to judge for himself what a great service we offer. We're happy to see the Court has issued a statement that the case is over. We're putting all of this behind us.”
Infinium, meanwhile, was expected to have a strong presence at CES in Las Vegas this week as it readied the Phantom service’s launch. It remained unclear, however, when the launch would happen.