TRA and WPP's Court-ordered mediation related to an ongoing lawsuit between the two companies has ended without resolution, TRA said Friday. Earlier this year TRA sued Kantar for launching its
RapidView Retail media planning tool service, which it alleged violated patents related to TRA's similar TRAnalytics offering launched several years ago. The mediation session followed a denial of a
motion by TRA for a preliminary injunction by the Federal Court in Manhattan barring RapidView from the marketplace until the case is settled. With the unsuccessful mediation, TRA said the suit now
proceeds with its request for a permanent injunction and damages for patent infringement of its patent, "Analyzing Return on Investment of Advertising Campaigns by Matching Multiple Data Sources"
(U.S. Patent No. 7,729,940). TRA also said there are other outstanding causes of action asserted by TRA which the Court has yet to consider, including whether 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. WPP/Kantar was an early investor in the TRA offering. Mark
Lieberman, Chairman and CEO of TRA, Inc. said, "TRA's innovations have distanced our software technology from the competition by matching multiple large data sources, such as set-top-box data and
frequent shopper data, 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." TRA said it currently has more than 45 package goods and pharma brands, and a number of major networks and agencies using its
service. It also said that last month the U.S. Patent Office validated TRA's solution by granting TRA its second major patent entitled "Using Consumer Purchase Behavior for Television Targeting," U.S.
Patent No. 8,000,99.
Kantar declined to comment on this latest development.
