Maponics Successfully Concludes Settlement of Its Lawsuit Against Factle
Maponics, a leading provider of spatial databases and the developer of the Maponics Neighborhood Boundaries ™ product line, has successfully settled litigation against Factle and its owner, Bernt Wahl, for unfair competition, false advertising and copyright infringement.
The dispute arose over Factle’s unauthorized distribution of mapping products incorporating a neighborhood database purchased by Maponics in an asset acquisition. After Wahl and Factle repeatedly violated contractual terms and made misrepresentations in the marketplace, Maponics sought to enforce its ownership rights, including copyright protection of the database.
While innovative at the time, most of that original database has passed into obsolescence, and now represents only a tiny fraction of the neighborhood product sold by Maponics.
Pursuant to the settlement, Factle paid Maponics a cash amount and promised to refrain from making advertising claims or statements of any kind about Maponics for a period of two years.
“Some commentators mistakenly tried to make this out to be a fight between a valiant defender of public data (Wahl) vs. a corporation claiming to ‘own your neighborhood’,” said Maponics’ attorney George Frost. “Rubbish. In our view, this was an open and shut case of one corporation (Factle) distributing another’s (Maponics) data product without permission to do so.”
Factle customers: Call or email Maponics at 800.762.5158 or info@maponics.com for an upgrade to your old neighborhood database.