Wiley files suit against Palisade Corporation and Samuel McLafferty for alleged breach of contract and trademark infringement over Wiley Registry of Mass Spectral Data
John Wiley and Sons recently filed a complaint against the Palisade Corporation and Samuel McLafferty, its owner, in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Wiley is the publisher and copyright holder of the database the Wiley Registry of Mass Spectral Data, used to analyse chemical substances in a variety of fields, including the pharmaceutical, environmental and oil industries.
Wiley alleges that Palisade breached its nonexclusive distribution agreement and violated Wiley's intellectual property rights by creating, promoting, and selling under its own name an unauthorised derivative database product, the Palisade Complete, which Wiley says in fact consists primarily of the entirety of the Wiley Registry of Mass Spectral Data, Seventh Edition (Wiley Registry) along with two smaller databases.
Wiley further alleges that Palisade intended to obscure and subordinate the Wiley name in connection with the Palisade Complete, and to position its own product to supplant the Wiley Registry as the premiere spectral database on the market.
"Wiley is taking this action to protect the goodwill and integrity of the Wiley Registry, the leading database in spectral chemical analysis.
"Scientists and researchers in many fields use its spectral data for reliable testing and analysis.
"We believe we can best serve them by protecting the high-quality content on which they have depended for decades," said Gary Rinck, the general counsel at Wiley.
In January 2004, Wiley signed the newest in a series of nonexclusive distribution agreements with Palisade for the database.
That agreement did not transfer to Palisade any rights in the intellectual property contained in the Wiley Registry or confer a right to 'pass off' that database as Palisade's own, says Wiley.
Wiley terminated Palisade's distribution agreement on 9 April 2004.
By its complaint, Wiley is seeking to have the Court halt any further sales of the Palisade Complete. Wiley's action was brought under the US Trademark Act of 1946, commonly known as the Lanham Act, for use of a false designation of origin and for false advertising; under the common law of the State of New York for breach of contract; and for violation of New York General Business Law (unfair competition).
