ITC Sues CADopia
Today the ITC announced that it is suing former member CADopia for:
- Breach of Contract
- Trademark Infringement
- Unfair Competition
- Deceptive Trade Practices
Apparently, CADopia failed it cough up the ITC commercial membership fees (about $47,000) for part of 2008 and 2009. Subsequently in May this year the ITC terminated CADopia’s membership. CADopia was supposed to stop distributing its products that use ITC technology and recall all inventories within 90 days. However, CADopia carried on business as usual and continued selling its products, besides continuing to use the ITC’s trademarks.
CADopia has not updated its products in a while. The latest version CADopia 8 is based on the now outdated IntelliCAD 6.4. This probably means that they had been denied access for to the ITC source code for quite some time now.
In its press release the ITC shed some light on its relationship with CADopia:
In October 1999, CADopia signed one of the first commercial member contracts to join the ITC and resell IntelliCAD under the brand name CADopia. During the next ten years, CADopia became one of the more well-known products based on IntelliCAD. CADopia founder and CEO, Surya Sarda was very active in the management of the ITC, serving as ITC president from 2001 to 2004, ITC Development Manager from 2002 to 2004, and ITC Board Member from 2001 to 2007.
Surya Sarda refused to comment on the dispute since it was sub judice. But told me he would be counter-suing the ITC for damages. The ITC is already asking the court for damages and attorney fees, besides making CADopia stop distributing its products.
I get the feeling that things are going to get messy from here on.